Art and Technology

2006-10-28T16:35:45+02:00

Technology is about enablement and adapting technology in a way that transcends evolution. Since the 1960’s technology has allowed us to leave planet earth and travel space.

Humans only inhabit an extremely small part of existence and a small space in reality. Space is now a part of human existence.

Stellarc deals with the influence of technology on his body by incorporating technology into his body, by making himself part of the technology. For example building a robot extra arm and connecting the
electrodes to him muscles to control it.

Stellarc also maps the stresses of everyday human life on his body. For instance to show gravity Stellarc hung himself upside down on meat hooks to examine what happens to the body under stress from gravity.
Stellarc degrades the body to just an entity within an empty universe. He removes the self-importance of the human body.

Stellarc also wired his whole body to electrodes and anyone could control his body on the internet, they could make him dance, walk and even fall over. He has offered up his body as just a part of an art exhibition. Stellarc believes that our bodies are always controlled by others. We exploit our bodies at work to receive money, but our bodies are being controlled by the employer. So Stellarc literalises this in his art.

Orlan is an artist who calls herself an ‘aesthetic beauty’. She took lots of conventional paintings of beauty and merged them into one overall image of beauty. She decided she wanted to turn herself into this picture of so called ‘beauty’ using plastic surgery. She calls this surgery ‘Carnal Art’ because she does not want to achieve a plastic, fake result. She wants to modify her body to make people engage in debate. The surgery is transmitted live on television. Orlan also remains conscious throughout the surgery, using only local anaesthetic so she can answer questions from the watching public during the surgery.

Ron Athley, is a Christian artist, who mutilates his body to produce his art. He is a former junkie and is HIV positive. He regards his body as “a fleshy prison that which houses the pain”.

Fakir Musafar, an artist who re-sculpted his body using metal devices and corsets. He is interested in why other cultures change their bodies in various ways and why is it perceived as weird if people in western culture want to do the same.

Franco B is a performance artist and engages in blood letting, during his performances, although he will only do four performances a year, due to the massive amounts of blood lost. He comes onto the stage naked and covered in white paint. He then lets blood drain out of a wound in a vein in his arm. He moves around and the blood makes patterns on the white floor he is standing on.
His art is live and watched by an audience, so this is can be compared to Victorian dissections that people used to gather round to watch with a kind of gruesome fascination.

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