Fractal Flesh Audio

Ping Body and Parasite internet performances

The Fractal Flesh CD contains sound recordings from Fractal Flesh, Ping Body and Parasite performances made during 1996/7, at venues including the ICA London, De Ysbreker Amsterdam, Zone Gallery Newcastle UK and the Ars Electronica Center Linz.
The sound heard in these performances is the result of the body's involuntary limb motion through muscle stimulation, improvised action and the mechanism of the third hand. Where previous performances used internal body signals (brainwaves, bloodflow, heartbeat and muscles) as sound modulation sources, these more recent events have used flexion, proximity, pressure, accelerometer, tilt and ultrasound sensors to generate MIDI events from finger, limb and head motion.
The change from biological to motion-based sensors was called for by use of the STIMBOD muscle stimulation system. This applied voltages of 0-60V to the body, and so interfered with the micro- and millivolt fluctuations of the biological signals.

Fractal Flesh for Northern Electric Dance in 1996 allowed people present at Zone Gallery to choreograph the movements of the body - and inadvertently compose the sounds - using the STIMBOD touchscreen interface. The performance continued for two days.
Ping Body was first performed in 1996 for Digital Aesthetics in Sydney. By using the internet PING protocol in conjunction with STIMBOD, the body was actuated automatically by the ebb and flow of data on the web.
Parasite was first performed for the Virtual World Orchestra Glasgow in 1997. A crude nervous system for the body was constructed using a customised search engine to scan, select and display images from the web during the performance.

NMACD 9902

For further details or to buy the CD, contact Rainer Linz

NMA home page

Stelarc Home Page