Stelarc: The Monograph (Electronic Culture: History, Theory, and Practice) Review

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Stelarc: The Monograph (Electronic Culture: History, Theory, and Practice) ReviewIn the early 80s, I brought Stelarc to speak at Caltech. He showed up with a mechanical third arm and a collection of slides. He proceeded to declaim at length about his previous art performances throughout the world, and his vision of what his performances were meant to convey to a lay audience. Then, I recently ran across this book, with a foreword by William Gibson, no less.
It is a collection of essays by various intellectuals, revolving around analysing Stelarc. His worldview is presented. A different approach from that epitomised in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Kapek's RUR, Saberhagen's Berserkers or the Terminator movies. Those echo the fear of a machine, born of man, that turns against humans. Instead, Stelarc's view is much cheerier. He is a performance artist, whose exhibitions are physical metaphors that suggest a peaceful evolution of humans, where we incorporate technological items into or perhaps on or around our bodies. He draws a distinction between Darwinian evolution, where obsolescence can mean extinction. Instead, any differences between us and machines are elided, as we absorb what they can offer, to exhance and extend our capabilities.
To some this is repulsive. To others, it is a glittering vision of a transhumanist future. Where we can someday (soon?) overcome the limitations of frail flesh. The book has echoes of views espoused by Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil. Though it does not go so far as to posit a technological singularity in the near future.
The photos in the book show Stelarc's remarkable talent. He has exhibited in Tokyo, Copenhagen, London and many other places since the 1980s. In many of the photos, he is naked, but adorned with some strange electromechanical gizmo, that has some type of feedback with his body. (When he spoke at Caltech, he was fully clothed.) Other photos show him dangling by many fish hooks through his skin. In one instance, one storey above a city street.
At least one chapter comments on the irony of his exhibitions. While he speaks of a metaphor of transcending the human form, his very nakedness starkly emphasises that form.
Of course, when he first did his exhibitions, all he could provide were rough metaphors. Limited by the crude mechanical devices of the time. But as microminiturisation proceeds, and as genetic engineering takes on more of an engineering aspect, all coupled with a world wide web, then he looks prescient.Stelarc: The Monograph (Electronic Culture: History, Theory, and Practice) OverviewStelarc is the most celebrated artist in the world working withintechnology and the visual arts. He is both an artist and a phenomenon, using hisbody as medium and exhibition space. Working in the interface between the body andthe machine, employing virtual reality, robotics, medical instruments, prosthetics,and the Internet, Stelarc's art includes physical acts that don't always looksurvivable -- or, as science fiction novelist William Gibson puts it in hisforeword, "sometimes seem to include the possibility of terminality."Stelarc'sprojects include Third Hand, a grasping and wrist rotating mechanism with arudimentary sense of touch that is attached to the artist and activated by EMG fromother body areas; Amplified Body, in which the artist performs acoustically with hisbrainwaves, muscles, pulse, and blood flow signals; and the Stomach Sculpture, adevice -- or "aesthetic adornment" -- placed in the artist's stomach and presentedthrough video. Works in progress include the Extra Ear Project, a soft prosthesis ofskin and cartilage to be constructed on the artist's arm. Stelarc's work bothreflects and determines new directions in performance art and body art. Althoughthere have been hundreds of articles written about Stelarc since he began performingin the late 1960s, Stelarc: The Monograph is the first comprehensive study ofStelarc's work practice in over thirty years. Gathering a range of writers whoapproach the work from a variety of perspectives, it includes William Gibson'saccount of his meetings with Stelarc, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker's emphatic "WEARE ALL STELARCS NOW," and Stelarc himself in conversation with Marquard Smith.Taken together, these writers give us a multiplicity of ways to think aboutStelarc.

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