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

Marquard Smith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262693607 ISBN 13: 9780262693608

Publisher: MIT Press, 2007

Synopsis

A user's guide to Stelarc, the international performance artist whose extreme performances explore the borderland between bodies and machines.

Stelarc is the most celebrated artist in the world working within technology and the visual arts. He is both an artist and a phenomenon, using his body as medium and exhibition space. Working in the interface between the body and the machine, employing virtual reality, robotics, medical instruments, prosthetics, and the Internet, Stelarc's art includes physical acts that don't always look survivable―or, as science fiction novelist William Gibson puts it in his foreword, "sometimes seem to include the possibility of terminality."

Stelarc's projects include Third Hand, a grasping and wrist rotating mechanism with a rudimentary sense of touch that is attached to the artist and activated by EMG from other body areas; Amplified Body, in which the artist performs acoustically with his brainwaves, muscles, pulse, and blood flow signals; and the Stomach Sculpture, a device―or "aesthetic adornment"―placed in the artist's stomach and presented through video. Works in progress include the Extra Ear Project, a soft prosthesis of skin and cartilage to be constructed on the artist's arm. Stelarc's work both reflects and determines new directions in performance art and body art. Although there have been hundreds of articles written about Stelarc since he began performing in the late 1960s, Stelarc: The Monograph is the first comprehensive study of Stelarc's work practice in over thirty years. Gathering a range of writers who approach the work from a variety of perspectives, it includes William Gibson's account of his meetings with Stelarc, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker's emphatic "WE ARE ALL STELARCS NOW," and Stelarc himself in conversation with Marquard Smith. Taken together, these writers give us a multiplicity of ways to think about Stelarc.

About this title

About the Author

Marquard Smith is Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster, London. He is a Founder and Editor-in-Chief of <I>Journal of Visual Culture.</I><br /><br />William Gibson is the author of many books, including <I>Neuromancer</I> and, most recently, <I>Pattern Recognition</I>.<br /><br /><DIV>Jane Goodall is Director of Research in the College of Arts, Education, and Social Sciences at the University of Western Sydney.</DIV><br /><br />Timothy Druckrey is an independent curator and writer and editor of <I>Ars Electronica: Facing the Future</I> (MIT Press, 1999). He lectures internationally on the social impact of digital media, the transformations of representation, and communication in interactive and networked environments.<br /><br /><DIV>Arthur Kroker is Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture, and Theory at the University of Victoria.</DIV>

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262693607
• ISBN 13: 9780262693608
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272