Through the amalgamation of some fifty artists’ work and pioneering research proposals, the exhibition looks into the future, while exploring what it means to be human today. It asks questions on what the effect of assisted reproduction techniques, experiments in synthetic biology and an increased reliance on the digital realm could have on our future, our environment and our fellow earthly inhabitants.

Curated by the international artist and designer Catherine Kramer, and originally showcased at the Science Gallery, Dublin, in 2011, this updated version examines how our lives are currently being shaped by revolutionary scientific and technological fields, and attempts to define what it could feel like a hundred years from now.

Catherine Kramer is the co-founder of two artist-led think tanks: Center for Genomic Gastronomy and CoClimate, her work often traversing between art and science. Merely a couple of decades ago, the world was a very different place. Humankind’’s vision of a scientific and technological future was filled with optimism about where our scientific developments could take us. We believed in a world where humans would be better off, where disease would be eradicated, where our lives would be made more efficient.

This utopian view is now often overshadowed by fear of the speed at which technology is progressing and of predicted negative impacts.

It has produced hypotheses on where moral and legal perimeters lie and the cultural and ethical changes that. could be in store.

Although the term cyborg has long been confined to the territory of science fiction, living cyborgs now exist. Jesse Sullivan was named the first bionic man after losing his arms in an accident. The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago replaced the missing limbs with robotic prosthetics that connect to his nervous system, allowing his brain to drive movement in his arms.

Kevin Warwick, otherwise known as Captain Cyborg is the founder of Project Cyborg. Voluntarily the world’s first complete cyborg, the maverick scientist planted a microchip into his arm that allows him to turn on lights and computers by snapping his fingers as well as communicate with his wife, who is also micro-chipped, via brain waves.

Technology has the power to transform people’s lives. It enables us to stretch our capabilities in new and different ways as we replace limbs and organs, give humans super strength or simply communicate with different and more extraordinary methods.

How human beings will interact with machines in the future and how we will use technology to enhance our bodies will continue to captivate us. Will it result in a hybridisation between humans and machines, or are we creating our own extinction?

Worries about technological and sociological developments are as old as science itself, whether it was Socrates’ fear of the written word or Professor Stephen Hawking’s fear that Al could result in the end of the human race as its intelligence and consciousness surpasses our own.

Despite its dehumanising effect, our gravitation to technology and our ability to adapt to and modify our surroundings has led us to be the only advanced species, Maybe it is this same fear and fascination that will keep driving us forward with new technological potential. A future of drones, cyborgs, DNA modifications and Al assistants may raise complex ethical debates, but our relationship with technology is here to stay.