Relay Column: The Pinnacle of Beauty, the Disposal of Flesh. How Cybernetics Harmonize the Future of Body Decoration (Seiji Kagami)

Introduction

Somewhere in this world, there exists a crystal that generates love. It is paradoxical, achieved by discarding beauty. In a world where humans and machines merge, all material sublimity succumbs to the authority known as information technology.

I

Both love and beauty are creations of humans. The technology that colors the world of body decoration is also human-made.
The four nucleotide sequences ATGC that create our bodies, and the countless materials our bodies produce. Emotions like love and beauty, and the fashion created to move these emotions, can all be seen as informational phenomena.

II

The French poet Charles Baudelaire pointed out that makeup is "a method to discard the face." By processing the parts that make up our faces, such as eyes, lips, and nose, with makeup, he claimed to discard the body.
For someone like me, who often felt disillusioned with the raw body, the poet's words struck a strong chord.
But let's reconsider. Does the bare body truly deserve to be discarded? Biologically, nudity originally stimulates our central nervous system. At an instinctual level, probably irrespective of gender, it has the effect of concentrating our gaze.
It is evident from the repeated treatment of nude motifs throughout history, not only in examples like Michelangelo or medieval paintings.
So, how has fashion tuned the balance between biological physicality and the rational sense of body swaying with societal norms? Or can it be tuned through technology?