Bruno Giussani x Lucy McRae

Upstarts is a series in which key figures from The WIRED 100 list of digital powerbrokers nominate individuals they feel will make a huge impact on people's lives, through digital projects.

What will the human body be like in the future? That's a question being probed by Lucy McRae, an artist and body architect whose work explores themes of space travel, human augmentation, survival and adaptation.

McRae has been chosen by Bruno Giussani, European director of TED to feature in the WIRED / Intel Upstarts series, as she represents a shift in digital innovation in his eyes.

"What attracts me about Lucy's work is that she responds to the challenges of a complex world and a complex future by exploring and probing it through a variety of tools," says Giussani.

"I'm very interested in human performance, the human condition and looking at it through a science fiction lens of how we may evolve as humans in the future," says McRae. "I start to think about all of the potential problems that may arise, and from the point of view of an artist, how can I interpret those stories and invent solutions?"

Her current body of work, entitled The Future Day Spa, envisages the spa of tomorrow in which the tools and processes of the facility help the human form cope with the conditions of living in space. Note to your future self: it'll almost certainly involve vacuum packing.