Moon Ribas: The Cyborg Artist Who Dances to Earthquakes

Moon Ribas (Mataró, 1985), a Spanish dancer and choreographer, performs Waiting for Earthquakes, a piece where she dances in real-time to seismic activity detected by vibrating sensors implanted in the soles of her feet. She describes feeling two heartbeats—her own and the Earth's—and imagines roots extending from her feet into a global network. Co-founder with Neil Harbisson of the Cyborg Foundation, an organization that helps humans become cyborgs, defends their rights, and promotes cyborg art as a movement, Ribas identifies as a trans-species, not fully human due to her 'seismic sense,' yet feels closer to nature than to machines. She argues that since humans have modified their environment, it is time to modify themselves using technology to reveal existing but imperceptible realities. While pregnant, she created The Pregnancy Sense, a performance where she dances to the life growing inside her; her husband Quim uses bone-conduction headphones to listen to and translate the baby's movements and heartbeat into music, marking the first performance by a cyborg family. The article also explores posthumanism and transhumanism, citing philosopher Luca Grion and ethologist Roberto Marchesini, who critiques transhumanism for anthropocentrism and advocates for anthropodecentrism via zooanthropology. Cyborg art aims to create new senses that alter perception, making viewers see themselves as part of a global ecosystem.