Zombies, Humanoids, & Hybrids: The Creepy, The Uncanny & The Contestable
CS547 Human-Computer Interaction Seminars (Seminar on People, Computers, and Design)
Fridays 12:30-2:20 pm
Gates Building, Rm B01
Stelarc
November 13, 2015\
This is a time of Circulating Flesh, Fractal Flesh and Phantom Flesh. A time of extreme absence and alien experience. Of bodies performing in remote spaces with split physiologies and multiple agencies, where bodies are simultaneously possessed and performing. Being neither one nor the other, being neither here nor there, but partly present and mostly absent. Subjectively, the body now experiences itself as a more extruded system, rather than an enclosed structure. Bodies are inadequate, empty, involuntary, and absent to their agency. We are living in an age of excess and indifference. Of prosthetic augmentation and extended operational systems. An age of Organs Without Bodies, of organs awaiting bodies. Cadavers can be preserved forever with plastination and comatose bodies can be sustained indefinitely on life-support systems, whilst cryogenically suspended bodies await reanimation at some imagined future. The dead, the near-dead, the un- dead and the yet to be born now exist simultaneously. This is the time of the Cadaver, the Comatose and the Chimera. Of Zombies, Cyborgs, Hybrids and Humanoids. The uncanny and the creepy proliferate. The self becomes situated beyond the skin. It is partly through this extrusion that the body becomes empty. But this radical emptiness is not through a lack but rather through excess. In this age of body hacking, gene mapping, prosthetic augmentation, organ swapping, face transplants, gender reassignments, AI and AL, what it means to be other and what generates aliveness and affect is examined and interrogated.
Speaker Bio:
Stelarc is a performance artist who explores alternate anatomical architectures. He has performed with a THIRD HAND, a STOMACH SCULPTURE and EXOSKELETON, a 6- legged robot. FRACTAL FLESH remotely actuates the body with electrical stimulation. PING BODY and PARASITE are internet muscle actuation systems. PROSTHETIC HEAD is an embodied conversational agent that speaks to the person who interrogates it. EAR ON ARM is a surgical and cell-grown construct that will be internet-enabled for people in other places. Publications include STELARC: THE MONOGRAPH, Edited by Marqand Smith, Forward by William Gibson (MIT Press). In 1996 he was made an Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh and in 2002 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by Monash University, Melbourne. In 2010 was awarded the Ars Electronica Hybrid Arts Prize. In 2015 he received the Australia Council's Emerging and Experimental Arts Award. Stelarc is currently a Distinguished Research Fellow and Director of the Alternate Anatomies Lab, School of Design and Art at Curtin University. His artwork is represented by the Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne.
Last modified Mon, 2 Nov, 2015 at 13:32
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