THE THIRD HUMAN NATURE AS A SUBJECT OF POSTHUMAN STUDIES AND CONTEMPORARY ART
Alexander Kopytin
Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Department of Psychology, St. Petersburg Academy of Postgraduate Pedagogical Studies (St. Petersburg, Russian Federation)
Abstract
This paper discusses the changing nature of a human being under the influence of bio-, cogno-, socio-, and informational technologies. These changes are examined from the perspective of new approaches in the field of human studies—posthumanism, technohumanism, transhumanism, and ecohumanism. The so-called "third nature" of humans as a key factor in further changes in human qualities is discussed. Transformation occurring in the human environment and within humans themselves under the influence of digital and other high technologies are Illustrated with works by contemporary artists.
Keywords: third human nature, contemporary art, technicum, biocum, transhumanism, technohumanism, posthumanism, ecohumanism, new humanism, postdigital convergence
Introduction
The changes in human nature experienced under the influence of high technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), have been increasingly discussed from the perspective of modern systems of human studies. This article examines the so-called "third nature" of humans as their new living environment associated with an emerging set of human characteristics. This "third nature" complements the first two and can establish different relationships with them according to various post-human visions.
The "first nature” of humans is their pristine, natural habitat, together with their biological and psychological properties and behavioral adaptation strategies developed during a long historical period of anthropogenesis. The "second nature" is the material and spiritual culture created by humans, the living environment they have transformed, and the artificial habitat, including material objects (houses, roads, cars) and social institutions. This is "humanized" nature, created by labor, consisting of natural objects purposefully modified by humans, which function similarly to natural objects, but whose development is directed and controlled by humans." [2, p. 4]
Human "third nature" refers to the realm of high technology, artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality, and bioengineering, though linked to humans but qualitatively different from what humans and their living environment represented in previous historical eras. Interaction with such an environment becomes a factor of further complex, and ambiguous, changes in humans. The main characteristics of "third nature" are as follows:
• Technogenicity: Based on the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution, "third nature" includes computers, robots, and artificial materials.
• Artificiality: This is a reality created entirely by the mind and human activity, often having no analogues in the natural world.
• Hybridity: This nature can be viewed as a fusion of the biological and digital (cyborgization, bioart), or as artificial life.
• Environmental intelligence: It implies a transition from the simple transformation of materials to the creation of self-organizing systems and AI.
Third nature marks a further alienation from the natural world. According to R. Kurzweil [15], by the end of the 21st century, the world will be populated predominantly by AI in the form of information programs transmitted through electronic networks. These programs will be able to manifest themselves in the physical world as robots, as well as simultaneously control multiple programmable bodies. At the same time, individual intellects will constantly combine and separate, therefore it will be impossible to determine how many "people" or "intelligent beings" live on Earth. This new plasticity of consciousness will profoundly alter the nature of human identity. Physical, technologically unmediated encounters between human subjects in the real world will become extremely rare. Moreover, what is traditionally understood as a subject will dissolve into information flows and electronic networks.
But the more the environment and human nature itself change, due to bio-, cogno-, socio-, and information technologies, the more pronounced becomes the human desire to reintegrate into the natural world, to preserve and develop its natural foundation.
Art currently plays a significant role in humanity's environmental agenda, exploring and modeling various perspectives related to the human’s relationship with their three natures. Artists possess the freedom to pose and solve problems, regardless of their complexity, using a wide range of expressive means. Digital technologies have recently expanded the scope of expressive means and capabilities that contemporary art possess.
Artistic projects can assume higher risks than scientific research projects, engage local communities, and receive broad support from society. They possess the means for socio-psychological reflection, discussion, and action that shape new ways of thinking and behaving. For this reason, it is interesting to consider how the human relationship with the environment and its three natures, especially, third nature is modeled through contemporary art.
Human living environment: Technicum or biocum?
When describing the three human natures and the possibilities to create more favorable conditions for humanity and non-human life, the concepts of technicum and biocum are often used today. The biocum is the biosphere, which includes all forms of life, while the technicum is an artificial living environment created using high technology, as well as its non-biological inhabitants –AI, and hybrid forms of intelligent beings that include both biological and technogenic elements (cyborgs).
In What technology wants [10], Kevin Kelly writes: "About 10,000 years ago, humanity crossed a threshold where our ability to change the biosphere exceeded the planet's ability to change us. This threshold marked the beginning of the technicum. We are now at a second turning point, when the capacity of the technical world to change us exceeds our capacity to change ourselves." [10, p. 271]
Kelly suggests that the technicum strives for the same things as life (the biocum)—efficiency, the realization of potential, order, complexity, diversity, specialization, ubiquity, freedom, interconnectedness, beauty, intelligence, structure, and evolutionary capacity [10].
While in the biocum, structural needs and potentials were reconciled through adaptation determined by natural selection, in the development of the technicum, needs and potentials are reconciled through conscious intentionality, that is, human intentions [10, p. 183], and more recently, also the intentionality of a new generation of non-biological thinking agents. This means that humanity is entering an era of non-anthropocentric reality, in which humans, as biological, rational beings, cease to be the "measure of all things." Alongside humans, other inhabitants of the planet are becoming increasingly significant subjects of a new, emerging human community and non-human agents including AI.
Qualitative changes in the living conditions of humans, the growing influence of bio-, cogno-, socio-, and information technologies on their physical and mental spheres and social environment, require appropriate strategies for humanity's adaptation to this new reality, and stimulate the development of post-humanistic philosophical and anthropological concepts. As Michael A. Peters, Petar Jandrić, and Benjamin J. Green [12] emphasize:
“…the study of postdigital ecologies compels us to confront a pivotal question: How can we co-evolve with intelligent technologies in a way that harmonizes technological progress with the preservation of biological life? By examining the synergies and tensions between AI, digital ecosystems, and natural environments, we may chart a path toward a sustainable civilization—one where technology serves as a steward of ecological and societal vitality rather than a force of disruption. The journey ahead demands interdisciplinary collaboration, ethical foresight, and a reimagining of what it means to thrive in an era where human, machine, and ecosystem intelligence are inextricably linked.” (851f.)
The ubiquity of digital technology in all aspects of human life has brought about the convergence between the digital and analog realms, or the postdigital convergence. Both these fields operate through continuous interaction with the environment. Both ecological systems and AI systems share a common emergent property, in which knowledge does not simply accumulate but emerges from complex interactions of simpler components. Interactions between AI and the natural environment are becoming an important mechanism for the survival of the human species. Artificial intelligence has the potential to help mitigate environmental problems, optimize resource use, and promote sustainable practices. However, its environmental impact and potential negative consequences must be considered [ibid, p. 852].
Transhumanism, technohumanism, posthumanism, ecohumanism, New Humanism
The ongoing changes in human beings, influenced by the third nature, support the development of post-human anthropologies, such as posthumanism, transhumanism, technohumanism, ecohumanism, and new humanism. Their emergence and formation can be divided into several stages. Among their predecessors were the critique of the Western model of humanity, which reached its apogee in the postmodern period.
The concepts of “posthuman” and “posthumanism" themselves were first used by literary theorist and writer Ihab Hassan. In his 1977 work Prometheus as performer: In search of a posthumanist culture [7], he drew attention to posthumanism as a new phenomenon emerging in response to the crisis of humanism.
Donna Haraway [3] introduced the term "posthumanism" in her article entitled "A Manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the 1980s." She described the emergence of cyborgs on the historical stage [4], describing them as simultaneously human and machine, embodying "... a pre-Oedipal symbiosis, ... the final unification of all human and technical elements into a higher unity" (p. 150). In her view, the posthuman [4] is a fusion of animals and machines with humans: “It is part machine, part human, part animal, part prosthesis – synthetic, computerized, and pharmaceutically modified.” (p. 173)
In her later work, Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the chthulucene. [5], D. Haraway calls for the unification of humans and other beings in the interests of survival. Anthropocentrism is the leading cause of the ecological crisis that currently affects the entire planet and maintains inequalities in society and in human relations with the natural world. According to her, by overthrowing human exceptionalism, posthumanism opens up new opportunities to act in accordance with an ethical position in human relations with their own kind and with nature.
One of the founders of critical posthumanism, K. Hayles [8], believes that the posthuman is not only a cyborg, but also a biological being (p. 4), which marks not so much the end of humanity as a rejection of the liberal-humanist concept of the human that has developed in Western societies. Despite the common causes underlying the emergence of various post-human perspectives, such as trans-, techno-, and ecohumanism, there are significant, even fundamental, differences between them. While transhumanism and technohumanism are characterized by optimism and faith in humanity's advancement toward higher levels of technological development and its ability to transform the environment to its advantage, environmental humanity and ecohumanism recognize humanity's dependence on the environment and take a more cautious, even negative, approach to what humans do with the natural world, including their biological foundation.
Posthumanist perspectives suggest that human activity is the result of the interaction of various internal and external processes in which humans participate but are unable to fully control them. Human activity is part of the ecosystem and the artificial environment they have created.
Transhumanism and technohumanism now embrace a position and philosophical concept that promotes the use of scientific and technological advances to enhance human mental and physical capabilities. They define the meaning of our time not as the "end of humanity," but as an expansion of the very concept of "humanity," encompassing the entirety of human and post-human agents.
Currently, transhumanism is presented not only as a human doctrine but also as a political movement, implemented by transhumanist parties. As an international political movement, transhumanism proclaims that scientific and technological progress will enable fundamental changes in humans: significantly increasing their mental, physical, and psychological capabilities, eliminating aging, prolonging life, and resorting to artificial reproduction.
Transhumanism opposes teachings and organizations that champion environmental values and the idea of human divine origin, characteristic of world religions. It combats the initiatives of its opponents, who restrict advanced scientific research and prohibit, for example, human cloning, the use of embryonic stem cells, and certain other technologies. Transhumanists support the developments in the fields of artificial intelligence, mind uploading, and cryonics. Many of them believe that technological advances will allow the creation of a posthuman being by 2050, whose abilities will be fundamentally different from those of modern humans. This will be achieved through genetic engineering, molecular nanotechnology, and direct computer-brain interfaces.
Transhumanists and technohumanists share anthropocentrism and anti-ecologism with traditional humanism, along with optimism and faith in the power of reason to overcome the fundamental challenges of human existence. While adherents of traditional humanism perceive complex moral dilemmas and are unwilling to cross certain "red lines," proponents of transhumanism accept the possibility of radical solutions to humanity's fundamental problems based on scientific advances. However, transhumanism contains obvious risks and shortcomings, which include the following:
- Since, according to the transhumanist position, humans are not a finished form, but a continuously improving being, the unbridled development of human enhancement technologies poses a real danger of adding new forms of discrimination to existing inequalities in society, both between humans and between humans and other living beings.
- Transhumanists not only accept the possibility of creating artificial beings superior to humans, but also strive to do so. This could pose the risk of such artificial beings dominating the planet and limiting human rights and interests.
- Transhumanism is associated with the risk of humans gradually losing their species, sexual, gender, and cultural identity.
Ecohumanism is a branch of posthuman theories that defends the value of human and planetary life. It provides a consistent moral position regarding human and planetary life, offering an ethical foundation for building relationships with people and nature. While critically evaluating the anthropocentrism inherent in traditional humanism, ecohumanism simultaneously draws on the best aspects of humanistic worldview [10]. Ecohumanism recognizes that humanism as a worldview principle cannot be limited to creating favorable conditions for human development alone, since humans can only be considered valuable when other forms life and ecosystems are recognized as equally valuable.
Ecohumanism is distinguished by its commitment to fundamental axioms related to the need to recognize ecological laws and to consider humanity as part of the system of planetary life. It is based on relational ontology of universal interconnectedness and advocates a broader concept of justice that extends to humans and non-human life forms.
Ecohumanism liberates the humanistic worldview from notions of the superiority of humans or certain categories of people over other humans and life forms. Associated with the recognition of people's ecological identity, it develops a sense of justice and perception of themselves as subjects participating in complex relationships and co-creation with other subjects—people, animals, plants, AI, and ecosystems.
The fundamental ideas of ecohumanism align with the concept of a new humanism adopted by UNESCO in 2010. It entails the ability to harmoniously combine tradition and the work of all previous generations with the demands of modernity. This tradition unites people, creating a common space for human communication and co-operation in the third millennium with its geopolitical, economic, and environmental challenges.
As Valery Kuvakin [1] notes, "In our time, humanist values are being globalized through global dialogue. In the 21st century, this is no longer simply establishing contacts, but global cooperation, the socialization of humanity." The new humanism is a worldview and way of life that affirms the value of the individual in relation to oneself, on the one hand, and equality and value in relation to other people, societies, and nature, on the other. Like ecohumanism, the new humanism defends the right of all living beings to well-being, development, self-realization, free and responsible participation in the life of the human and biotic community.
From the perspective of the new humanism, the presumption of human equality in relation to other people and living beings, and even to as-yet-unknown life forms, including artificial ones created by humans, is important. This perspective leads to an expanded or inclusive humanism, distinguished by its inclusion of positions unconventional to European humanism, related to ecological concepts of the planet's living matter, exobiology, and ecopoiesis—the creation of a large, comfortable, and beautiful home for all living beings.
In ecohumanism and the new humanism, the three human natures are not opposed to one another, but find a form of reconciliation, although this is not a simple process.
The third human nature in contemporary art
The third nature of humans is becoming an increasingly significant subject of contemporary art, representing the new human reality through various posthumanistic perspectives.
Kajsa von Zeipel is a prominent exponent of the transhumanist perspective. She particularly explores themes of gender and human corporeality, creating hybrid bodies and identities by combining biological forms with non-biological devices and products. Her project, which involves creating figures from silicone—a material often used in implants, sex toys, and kitchen equipment—has gained notoriety. Zeipel subverts normative bodies, presenting them in unnatural poses. Her multi-figure installation "Alternative Milk" features works such as "Gay Milk" and "Mommy Crane," images of young girls in the process of transitioning into adulthood, as well as a silicone Madonna—the archetypal Great Mother. The aesthetics of these works can seem simultaneously hyperbolic and dystopian, visualizing the interaction of technology and biology. At the center of this transhumanist orgy is the human body. The ideals of female fertility, love, and the bond between mother and child, celebrated in various cultures, are transformed in her installation into the benchmarks of biocybernetic industry.
Fig.1 Kaisa von Zeipel. Sculpture from the installation "Alternative Milk," 2022. https://www.andrehn-schiptjenko.com/artists/42-cajsa-von-zeipel/
A typical example of technohumanist "cyborg art" are the "works" of Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas, created using their own bodies by implanting electronic devices that allow them to receive light and acoustic waves and transform them into visual and rhythmic images. These artists typically perform together, presenting their performances in which they act as a cyborg duo (https://residencyunlimited.org/residencies/neil-harbisson-and-moon-ribas/)
Neil Harbisson had a miniature antenna surgically implanted in his head, allowing him to overcome the limitations of achromatopsia—a type of color blindness that rendered his vision exclusively black and white. As a result of his antenna, he was able to experience synesthesia, hearing color waves converted into sound signals. The ability to hear colors, including ultraviolet and infrared, invisible to the human eye, strengthened his conviction that he was something other than "human." He refers to his new posthuman identity as a "cyborg."
His colleague, Moon Ribas, implanted a chip in her elbow that reads seismic signals and, by amplifying them, causes tremors in her hand. Tremors from stronger, more distant earthquakes initially woke her at night, creating the sensation of two hearts—one human, the other earthly. During the first months of living with this antenna in her elbow, she suffered from headaches and fatigue, but eventually adapted. During her performances, Ribas translates the tremors she feels into drumming and dancing. She emphasizes that the electronic device implanted in her body is not an instrument, but a part of her.
A striking example of technohumanist and ecohumanist perspectives in contemporary art are the projects of Refik Anadol, a media artist and researcher known for his work in the field of generative art based on AI. His work intersects machine learning, data aesthetics, and human perception, aiming to expand the boundaries of digital art. His large-scale installations have been exhibited worldwide, from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York to the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He has completed several projects in collaboration with Google, NASA, and Microsoft.
He creates fluid, ever-changing visual compositions by transforming various information, including human brain activity, climate data, and satellite imagery, into mesmerizing digital landscapes that appear constantly changing, and responsive in real time. Using AI as a creative collaborator, Anadol blurs the line between human imagination and machine intelligence. His research also explores the role of the artist in an era dominated by AI. His influence extends beyond the art world, inspiring ideas in architecture, neuroscience, and ecology, where data visualization plays a crucial role in raising awareness of processes in the human environment.
One of Anadol's projects, based at the Bombi Gallery in Italy, reimagines a recently reconstructed passageway as a cognitive and aesthetic threshold Building on previous experiments with this unique resonant tunnel structure, the work transforms the linearity of movement into a meditative journey through deep evolutionary time. In this environment, data is not static information, but living, dynamic, and sensory material.
This project is based on the Large Nature Model (LNM), an advanced artificial intelligence system trained on visual, auditory, and environmental data from various biomes. As the visitor moves through the Bombi Gallery, they are surrounded by nature's hidden dreams—vegetal textures, oceanic pulsations, atmospheric rhythms—embodied in generative movement.
"Data Tunnel" represents both a conceptual and technical window into a broader research effort encompassing scientific research, environmental archives, and machine creativity. "Data Tunnel" demonstrates the poetics of the process of creating a new artistic and human reality, involving technology, databases, and nature.
Fig. 2 R. Anadol. "Data Tunnel" (Bombi Gallery, Gorizia, Italy) https://www.infordata.pro/press-releases/bombi-gallery-opens-refik-anadols-digital-art-meets-the-gorizia-of-the-future/
An example of the implementation of the eco-human model in contemporary art, demonstrating the possibilities of direct human communication with the world's ocean ecosystem using information technology, is Newton Harrison's "Sensorium" [4]. The project involves the creation of an interactive, three-dimensional interface in which floors, walls, and even the ceiling act as "living" environments connected to real-time data on the state of the world's oceans. Visual and textual information is transmitted to these surfaces, allowing for the simulation of different states of the world's oceans. Drawing on 2D, 3D, VR elements, and complex sound instruments and combining them into a single space, visitors have the opportunity to gain a new experience of a multisensory perception of the world's ocean, based on the unification of visual, auditory, and tactile sensations in real time.
The project is a complex immersive system capable of engaging people in ecological knowledge and enabling them to engage in a living dialogue with the ocean. "Sensorium" also serves as a simulated, predictive planning environment in which oceanographic problems can be addressed. Of particular interest is how ocean stressors interact with each other, enabling potential solutions to environmental problems by understanding the vast, highly complex system of the world's oceans as a living environment in its interactions with humans.
As Newton Harrison notes, the Sensorium has the potential to become the "voice" of the world's oceans:
"It works to make visible what is happening in the world's oceans, anywhere and at any time... The Voice of the Ocean speaks the truth about its problems and needs – from the great to the small. The project's blend of science and art engenders a profound empathy for the ocean, which is essentially the mother of life itself, threatened by our own actions. Thus, the cathedral-like immersive environment, with its numerous artistic, figurative presentations and objective data on the state of the ocean, adds emotional power to its impact on the audience". [4]
Conclusion
Reflecting on the third human nature and the possibilities of its integration with the other two natures based on post-digital convergence, one can see how different the lenses for perceiving this process and understanding the changing human condition can be, depending on various posthuman perspectives. Contemporary art, along with the humanities, allows us to explore various models of such integration and actualize them in public consciousness. The concept of post-digital ecosystems for civilization [12] represents a transformative exploration of how artificial intelligence (AI), digital technologies, and new computing systems intersect with and potentially redefine the future of human civilization and global ecosystems.
The post-digital era goes beyond the simple ubiquity of digital tools; it envisions a world where technologies are so deeply woven into the fabric of existence that they transform the nature of humans themselves as part of a relational ontology of the dyadic "humanity-environment" system. In this new third nature reality, as demonstrated, for example, by the projects of Newton Harrison or Refik Anadol, human and artificial intelligence and ecosystems can collaborate to sustain and improve life on Earth.
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Suggested citation note
Kopytin, A. (2026). The third human nature as a subject of posthuman studies and contemporary art. Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice, 7 (2). [open access internet journal]. – URL: http://ecopoiesis.ru (d/m/y)