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ALTERNATE, INTIMATE AND INVOLUNTARY EXPERIENCES STELARC
INTRODUCTION - In previous actions the body has performed
with technology attached (the Third Hand- actuated with EMG
signals), technolology inserted (the Stomach Sculpture- a
self-illuminating, sound-emitting, opening/closing, extending and
retracting mechanism operating in the stomach cavity) and
Net-connected ( the body becoming accessed and remotely activated
by people in other places). The body has been
augemented, invaded and now becomes a
host- not only for technology, but also for
remote agents. Just as the
Internet provides extensive and interactive
ways of displaying, linking and retrieving information and
images it may now
allow unexpected ways of accessing, interfacing and
uploading the body itself. And instead of seeing the Internet
as a means of fulfilling out-moded metaphysical desires of
disembodiment, it offers on the contrary ,
powerful individual and collective strategies for projecting
body presence and extruding body
awareness. The Internet does not hasten the
disappearance of the body and the dissolution of
the self- rather it generates new collective
physical couplings and a telematic scaling of
subjectivity. What becomes important is not merely the
body's identity, but its connectivity-
not its mobility or location, but its
interface....
1. EXOSKELETON: A six-legged, pneumatically powered
walking machine has been constructed for the body.
The locomotor, with either ripple or tripod gait
moves fowards, backwards, sideways and turns
on the spot. It can also squat and lift by splaying or
contracting its legs. The body is positioned on a
turn-table, enabling it to rotate about its axis.
It has an exoskeleton on its upper body
and arms. The left arm is an extended arm
with pneumatic manipulator having 11
degrees-of- freedom. It is human-like in form
but with additional functions. The fingers
open and close , becoming multiple
grippers. There is individual flexion of the
fingers, with thumb and wrist rotation. The body
actuates the walking machine by moving its arms.
Different gestures make different
motions- a translation of limb to leg motions.
The body's arms guide the choreography of the
locomotor's movements and thus compose the
cacophony of pneumatic and mechanical and
sensor modulated sounds....
2. EXTRA EAR- Having developed a Third Hand,
consider the possibility of constructing an
extra ear, positioned next to the real ear.
A laser scan was done to create a 3D simulation
of the Extra Ear in place. Although the chosen
position is in front of and beside the right ear, this may
not be the surest and safest place anatomically
to put it. A balloon would be inserted under
the skin and then gradually inflated
over a period of months until a bubble
of stretched skin is formed. The balloon is then
removed and a cartilage ear shape is inserted and
pinned inside the bag of excess skin. A cosmetic surgeon
would then need to cut and sew the skin over the cartilage
structure. Rather than the hardware prosthesis of a
mechanical hand , the Extra Ear would be a
soft augmentation, mimicking the actual ear
in shape and structure, but having different functions.
Imagine an ear that cannot hear but rather can
emit noises. Implanted with a sound chip and a
proximity sensor, the ear would speak to anyone
who would get close to it. Perhaps, the ultimate
aim would be for the Extra Ear to whisper sweet
nothings to the other ear. Or imagine the Extra Ear as
an internet antennae able to amplify
RealAudio sounds to augment the local sounds
heard by the actual ears. The Extra Ear would
be a prosthesis made from its own skin. Why an
ear? An ear is a beautiful and complex structure.
In acupuncture, the ear is the site for the
stimulation of body organs. It not only hears but
is also the organ of balance. To have
an extra ear points tomore than visual and
anatomical excess....
3. SURFACE AND SELF: THE SHEDDING OF SKIN- As
surface, skin was once the beginning of the
world and simultaneously the boundary
of the self. But now stretched, pierced and
penetrated by technology, the skin is no longer
the smooth and sensuous surface of a site or
a screen. Skin no longer signifies closure.
The rupture of surface and skin means the
erasure of inner and outer. An artwork has
been inserted inside the body.
The Stomach Sculpture- constructed for the Fifth
Australian Sculpture Triennale in Melbourne, whose
theme was site-specific work- was inserted
40cm into the stomach cavity. Not as a prosthetic
implant but as an aesthetic addition. The body
becomes hollow- not the BWO but rather a
body with art. The body is experienced as hollow with
no meaningful distinctions between public,
private and physiological spaces.
The hollow body becomes a host,
not for a self but simply for a sculpture.
As interface, the skin is obsolete.The significance
of the cyber may well reside in the act
of the body shedding its skin. The clothing
of the body with membranes embedded with
alternate sensory and input/ output
devices creates the possibility of more intimate
and enhanced interactivity. Subjectively, the body
experiences itself as a more extruded
system, rather than an eclosed structure. The self
becomes situated beyond the
skin. It is partly through this extrusion that the
body becomes empty. But this emptiness is not
through a lack but from the
extrusion and extension of its capabilities, its new
sensory antennae and its increasingly
remote functioning....
4. FRACTAL FLESH - Consider a body that can
extrude its awareness and action into other bodies
or bits of bodies in other places. An
alternate operational entity that is spatially
distubuted but electronically connected. A
movement that you initiate in Melbourne would be
displaced and manifested in another body in
Rotterdam. A shifting, sliding awareness that is
neither "all-here' in this body nor "all-there" in
those bodies. This is not about a fragmented body
but a multilplicity of bodies and parts of bodies
prompting and remotely guiding each
other. This is not about master-slave control
mechanisms but feedback-loops o f
alternate awareness, agency and of
split physiologies. Imagine one side of your body
being remotely guided whilst the other side
could collaborate with local agency.
You watch a part of your body move but you
have neither initiated it nor are you
contracting your muscles to produce it. Imagine
the consequences and advantages of being
a split body with voltage-in, inducing the
behaviour of a remote agent and voltage-out of
your body to control peripheral devices. This would
be a more complex and interesting body-
not simply a single entity with one
agency but one that would be a host
for a multipicity of remote and alien
agents. Of different physiologies and
in varying locations. Certainly there may
be justification, in some situations and for particular
actions to tele-operate a human arm
rather than a robot manipulater- for if the task
is to be performed in a non-hazardous
location, then it might be an advantage to use
a remote human arm- as it would be attached
to another arm and a mobile, intelligent body.
Consider a task begun by a body in one place,
completed by another body in another
place. Or the transmission and conditioning of
a skill. The body not as a site of inscription
but as a medium for the manifestation of
remote agents. This physically split body may
have one arm gesturing involuntarily (remotely
acutated by an unknown agent), whilst the
other arm is enhanced by an exoskeleton
prosthesis to perform with exquisite skill and
with extreme speed. A body
capable of incorporating movement that
from moment t o moment
would be a pure machinic motion
performed with neither memory
nor desire....
5. STIMBOD - What makes this posiible is a
touch-screen muscle stimulation system. A method
has been developed that enables the body's
movements to be programmed by touching the
muscle sites on the computer model.
Orange flesh maps the possible stimulation
sites whilst red flesh indicates the
actuated muscle(s). The sequence of motions
can be replayed continuously with its
loop function. As well as choreography
by pressing, it is possible to paste sequences
together from a library of
gesture icons. The system allows stimulation
of the programmed movement for
analysis and evaluation before transmission
to actuate the body. At a lower stimulation
level it is a body prompting system.
At a higher stimulation level it is a body
actuation system . This is not about
remote-control of the body, but rather of
constructing bodies with split physiologies,
operating with multiple agency. Was it
Wittgenstein who asked if in raising your
arm you could remove the intention of
raising it what would remain?
Ordinarily, you would associate intention with
action (except, perhaps in an instinctual motion-
or if you have a pathological condition like
Parkinson's disease). With Stimbod, though,
that intention would be transmitted from
another body elsewhere. There
would be actions without
expectations. A two-way tele-Stimbod system
would create a possessed and possessing
body- a split physiology to collaborate
and perform tasks remotely initated
and locally completed- at the same time
in the one physiology....
6. EXTREME ABSENCE AND THE EXPERIENCE OF THE ALIEN -
Such a Stimbod would be hollow body,
a host body for the projection and
performance of remote agents. Glove Anaethesia
and Alien Hand are pathological conditions
in which the patient experiences parts of
their body as not there, as not their own,
as not under their own control- an
absence of physiology on the one hand
and an absence of agency on the other. In a
Stimbod not only would it possess a split
physiology but it would experience
parts of itself as
automated, absent and
alien. The problem would no longer be
possessing a split personality, but rather
a split physicality. In our Platonic, Cartesian
and Freudian pasts these might have been
considered pathological and in our Foucauldian
present we focus on inscription and control
of the body. But in the terrain of cyber
complexity that we now inhabit the
inadequacy and the obsolescence of the
ego-agent driven biological body cannot be more
apparent. A transition from
psycho-body to cybersystem becomes necessary
to function effectively and intuitively in
remote spaces, speeded-up situations
and complex technological terrains. During
a Sexuality and Medicine Seminar in Melbourne,
Sandy Stone asked me what would be the
cyber-sexual implications of the Stimbod system? Not
having thought about it before I tried to explain what
it might be like. If I was in Melbourne and Sandy
was in NY, touching my chest would
prompt her to caress her breast.. Someone observing
her there would see it as an act of self-gratification,
as a masturbatory act. She would know though that her
hand was remotely and perhaps even divinely guided!
Given tactile and force-feedback, I would feel my
touch via another person from another place
as a secondary and additional sensation. Or, by feeling my
chest I can also feel her breast. An intimacy through
interface, an intimacy without proximity.
Remember that Stimbod is not merely a sensation of touch
but an actuation system. Can a body cope with
experiences of extreme absence and
alien action without becoming overcome by
outmoded metaphysical fears and obsessions
of individuality and
free agency?
A Stimbod would thus need to
experience its actuality neither
all-present-in this-body, nor
all-present-in-that-body,
but partly-here and projected-partly-there.
An operational system of spatially distributed but
electronically interfaced clusters of bodies ebbing
and flowing in awareness, augmented by alternate
and alien agency....
7. PING BODY / PROT0-PARASITE - In 1995 for
Telepolis, people at the Pompidou Centre (Paris),
the Media Lab (Helsinki) and the Doors of
Perception conference (Amsterdam), were able to
remotely access and actuate this body in Luxembourg,
using the touch-screen interfaced muscle stimulation
system. ISDN Picturetel links allowed the body
to see the face of the
person who was moving it whilst the programmers
could observe their remote choreography. (Although
people thought they were merely activating the body's limbs,
they were inadvertently composing the
sounds that were heard and the images of the body they
were seeing- for the body had sensors,
electrodes and transducers on its legs, arms and
head that triggered sampled body signals and sounds and
that also made the body a video switcher and mixer.
And although people in other places were performing with
the RHS of the body, it could respond by
actuating its Third Hand, voltage-out from
electrodes positioned on its abdominal and LHS leg
muscles. The Split Body then was
manifesting a combination of
involuntary - remotely guided, improvised and
EMG- muscle initiated motor motions). In
Ping Body- an Internet Actuated and Uploaded
Performance, (performed first for Digital Aesthetics in
Sydney, but also for DEAF in Rotterdam in 1996),
instead of the body being prompted by other
bodies in other places, Internet activity itself
choreographs and composes the performance.
Random pinging to over 30 global Internet
domains produce values from
0-2000 milliseconds that are mapped to the deltoid,
biceps, flexors, hamstring, and calf muscles -
0-60 volts initiating involuntary movements.
The movements of the body are amplified, with a midi
interface measuring position, proximity and
bending angle of limbs. Activated by Internet datana
the body is uploaded as info
and images to a Web site to be viewed by other
people elsewhere. The body is telematically
scaled-up, stimulated and stretched by
reverberating signals of an inflated spatial and
electrical system. The usual relationship with the
Internet is flipped- instead of the Internet being
constructed by the input from people, the Internet
constructs the activity of one body. The body
becomes a nexus for Internet activity- its
activity a statistical construct of computer networks.....
8. PARASITE: EVENT FOR INVADED AND INVOLUNTARY BODY-
A customized search engine has been
constucted that scans, selects and displays
images to the body- which functions in an
interactive video field. Analyses of the JPEG files
provide data that is mapped to the body
via the muscle stimulation
system. There is optical and
electrical input into the
body. The images that you see
are the images that move you . Consider the
body's vision, augmented and adjusted to a
parallel virtuality which increases in intensity
to compensate for the twilight of the real
world. Imagine the search engine selecting
images of the body off the WWW, constructing
a metabody that in turn moves the
physical body. Representations of the body actuate
the body's physiology.The resulting motion is
mirrored in a VRML space at the performance
site and also uploaded to a
Web site as potential and recursive source images
for body reactivation. RealAudio sound is
inserted into sampled body signals and
sounds generated by pressure,
proximity, flexion and
accelerometer sensors. The body's physicality
provides feedback loops of interactive neurons,
nerve endings, muscles, transducers and
Third Hand mechanism. The system
electronically extends the body's optical and
operational parameters beyond its
cyborg augmentation of its Third Hand and
other peripheral devices. The prosthesis of
the Third Hand is counterpointed by the
prosthesis of the search engine software
code. Plugged-in, the body becomes
a parasite sustained by an extended,
external and virtual nervous system.
Parasite was first performed for Virtual World
Orchestra in Glasgow. It has also been presented
for The Studio for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon
University at the Wood Street Galleries in
Pittsburgh, Festival Atlantico in Lisbon, NTT- ICC
in Tokyo, Ars Electronica in Linz and
for the Fukui Biennale....
9. MOVATAR- AN INVERSE MOTION CAPTURE SYSTEM-
Motion Capture allows a
body to animate a 3D computer-generated
virtual body to perform in
computerspace or cyberspace. This is usually
done by either markers on the body tracked by
cameras, analyzed by a computer and the
motion mapped onto the virtual actor. Or it can
be done using electromagnetic sensors (like
Polhemus or Flock-of-Birds) that indicate
position/ orientation of limbs and head.
Consider though a virtual body or an avatar
that can access a physical body, actuating it to
perform in the real world. If the avatar
is imbued with an artificial intelligence,
becoming increasingly autonomous and
unpredictable, then it would be
an AL (Artificial Life) entity performing
with a human body in physical space.
With an appropriate visual software
interface and muscle stimulation system
this would be possible. The avatar
would become a Movatar. It"s repetoire
of behaviour could be modulated continously
by Ping signals and might evolve
using genetic algorithms. And with
appropriate feedback loops from the real
world it would be able to respond
and perform in more complex
and compelling ways. The Movatar
would be able not only to act , but also
to express its emotions by appropriating
the facial muscles of the its physical body.
As a VRML entity it could be logged-into
from anywhere- to allow your body to be
accessed and acted upon. Or,
from its perspective, the Movatar could perform
anywhere in the real world, at anytime with
as many physical bodies in diverse and
spatially separated locations....
10. PHANTOM BODIES AND COLLECTIVE STRATEGIES-
Previously connection and communication with other
bodies on the Internet was only textual, with
an acute absence of physical presence.
This was not the experience
of authentic
evolved absence that results in an
effectively operating body in the real word -
absence of the body on the Internet is an
absence of inadequacy, that is an
inadequacy of appropriate feedback-loops.
As we hard-wire more high-fidelity image,
sound, tactile and force-feedback sensation
between bodies then we begin to
generate powerful phantom presences-
not phantom as in phantasmagorical, but phantom
as in phantom limb sensation. The sensation
of the remote body sucked onto your
skin and nerve endings,
collapsing the psychological and spatial
distance between bodies
on the Net. Just as in the experience
of a Phantom Limb with the amputee,
bodies will generate phantom partners , not
because of a lack, but as extending and
enhancing addition to their physiology. Your
aura will not be your own. It will only be through
the constuction of phantoms
that the equivalent of our evolved absence
will be experienced, as we function
increasingly powerfully and with speed and
intuition (a successful body operates automatically).
Bodies must now perform in techno-terrains
and data-structures beyond the
human-scale where intention and
action collapse into accelerated
responses. Bodies acting without expectation,
producing movements without
memory. Can a body act without
emotion? Must a body continuously affirm its
emotional, social and biological status quo?
Or perhaps what is necessary is
electronic erasure with new intimate,
internalized interfaces to allow for the design
of a body with more adequate inputs
and outputs for performance and awareness
augmented by search engines.
Imagine a body remapped and
reconfigured- not in genetic memory but rather
in electronic circuitry. What of a body
that is intimately interfaced to the WWW- and
that is stirred and startled by
distant whispers and remote promptings
of other bodies in other places. A body that
is informed by spiders knowbots and phantoms....
11. OPERATIONAL INTERNET/ INTELLIGENT SYSTEM-
Consider the Internet structured so that it would
scan, select and switch- automatically
interfacing clusters of on-line bodies in
real-time (the size and expertise of the clusters
selected for the task to be performed). Can a
body cope with the multiplicity of agents- a fluid and
flowing awareness that dims and intensifies
as agents are connected and disconnected?
Awareness and agency would be
shifted and shared in an electronic space
of distributed intelligence. The internet becomes
not merely a means of information
transmission, but a mode of transduction- affecting
physical action between bodies. Electronic
space as a realm of action, rather than
information. Imagine a body that is open
and aware, invaded, augmented
and with extended operation. Consider a
body whose awareness is extruded by
surrogate robots in situations and spaces where
no body could go. These machines with
arrays of sensors, manipulaters and hybrid
locomotion would exponentially multiply the
operational possibilities- scaling-up the subtlety,
speed and complexity of human action.
Perhaps what it means to be human
is about not retaining our humanity....
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS- Stelarc is presently a Visiting Fellow at the Studio
For Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. He has received a
Fellowship from the Visual Arts/Craft Board, Australia Council.
His artwork is solely represented by
the Sherman Galleries in Sydney.
Stimbod was developed with the assistance of
Troy Innocent at Empire Ridge in Melbourne.
The Muscle Stimulation System circuitry was designed by
Bio-Electronics, Logitronics and Rainer Linz
in Melbourne with the box fabricated with the assistance of
Jason Patterson.
The Fractal Flesh, Ping Body and Parasite software
were developed by
Gary Zebington and Dmitri Aronov
in Sydney.
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