i have just finished a couple of interviews with a journolist from the U.K and also from the U.S about my UBYKA ARMY - cyborg insects project. You can read exerts from my last interview below.
Don't Panic Magazine: Are the cyborg insects a reflection of real fears over militarisation, state control etc.?
DC: I like art that has multi-dimensional layers of meaning, and one of the aims of this series was to draw attention to the absurd military projects that the Pentagon's D.A.R.P.A (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) spends millions on each year. It amuses me that these creatures seem ridiculous and yet they are based on real scientific facts. I'm sure China and Russia are also working on similar forms of cyborg animals and perhaps the next arms race will be in this field. Another layer is the larger implications of what these technologies will bring to an Orwellian ‘big-brother' world. If scientists figure out how to completely control insects and animals by planting electrodes in specific areas of the brain and hijacking control over them, how far off is the human version going to be? The captured enemy combatant that is turned into a remote controlled traitor might be the beginning but then this can be used on home soil to silence opposition.
Don't Panic Magazine: Why would the military use these creatures?
DC: The animal world has provided mankind with military support over millennia. In the past horses and elephants where used for transport and in battle. In modern times the US Navy used dolphins and sea lions to protect ships and ports. Birds have been used for sending covert messages and warn soldiers of the presence of nerve and chemical agents. More recently, training of bees has been used to locate mines and weapons of mass destruction.
The motivation behind cyborg insects is simple: why labour for years to build robots that imitate the ways animals move when you can just plug into living creatures and hijack systems already optimised by millions of years of evolution? There's a long history of trying to develop micro-robots that could be sent out as autonomous devices, but I think many engineers have realised that they can't improve on Mother Nature. If you look at the U.S unmanned predator drone aircraft that have been equipped with missiles, it's conceivable that cyborg insects could be equipped with tiny but potent weapons, such as poison or hallucinogenic drugs and used to attack high-value targets such as a terrorist leader or a dictatorship's key nuclear weapons scientist.
