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Stelarc's contention made over a decade ago that the first signs of an alien
life form might well emerge from this planet seems all the more apt given the
electronic zeitgeist of current web life - web crawlers, knowbots, clonebots,
hackbots and semi-autonomous web robots. Indeed, twenty years ago in his autobiographical
monograph, STELARC, he prophetically described and anticipated the post-McLuhanesque
info-membrane matrix that we know as the world wide web. "Reintegrating
and shimmering/quivering within the event horizon the being involuted terminating
existence/activating anti-matter * energizing the all-at-onceness instantaneously."ii
Certainly, his most recent Australian performance (as part of Contemporary Art
and Technologyís Digital Aesthetics-One symposium) was an incandescant
reiteration of last yearís Telepolis internet performance from The Pompidou
Centre that triggered and looped the telematic body around the web. The net
effect (sic) was synasthetic in extremis. The localized subject seemingly relinquished
its authorial autonomy becoming somewhat the captive of the software developed
by the aptly named Merlin group. Ghostly gizmos au go go! Ashley Crawford (of
World Art/21C) commented to me after the event somewhat ruefully, "He's
one sick puppy!"
The assembled array of video projection screens displayed a multimedia mix of
Stelarc's body zinging, whirring and literally 'going through the motions' through
fractal configurations utilising Macromedia Director on a Unix workstation along
with Troy Innocent's STIMBOD touch screen interface software.
Body sounds (including the third hand) were generated and modulated into sonorous
booms of bass register and crystalline cascades of celeste. The projected home
page displayed the level of internet activity from over 30 internet domains.
The pings (internet software used to map spatial distance and transmission time
to body motion) were used to actuate a multiple muscle stimulator directing
0-60 volts to the body.
A graphical interface of limb motions simulated and initiated the physical body's
movements. The ping values of 0-2,000 milliseconds composed and choreographed
the performance. As well as actuating the body, the performance was then uploaded
to a website (http://www. merlin.com.au/stelarc) providing video images updated
every 60 seconds, diagrams and ping data to allow monitoring live on the net.
Throughout the event, Stelarc's techno-trauma seemed all the more palpable given
the totalizing terra-impact on the psycho-body. The scaled-up cyberbody's imaged
simulation kicked in and clicked out in a fractal zoom of fibre-optic flesh.
Aldous Huxley's notion of 'the feelies' in Brave New World iii seemed to have
some kind of spooky relevance and reverberation in Stelarc's visceral vision.
The body activated and actuated as phantom cyborg achieved that most slippery
of slippages, the post-human.
The Artspace performance was a logistical nightmare to orchestrate, to say the
least. A phalanx of videographers dutifully documented the event, everybody
seemingly hardwired to the situation both literally and metaphorically. Andrew
Pam from Serious Cybernetics along with Katherine Phelps of Surf's Up- Internet
Australian Style assisted Stelarc with some of the ping programming in Melbourne
prior to the event. The internet interface was designed by Gary Zebington (software
design) Dimitri Aronov (Unix programmer) and the Sydney based Merlin group.
Andrew Garton from Toy Satellite was consulted for his on-line html expertise.
Rainer Linz, as usual, provided sound design and Mic Gruchy designed the video
installation.
The electrosphere of satellites and telephony hotwired to computer networks
that constitute the internet is acting as an agency for macro-mediated direction
of localized action. The ISDN links of the net and the body both plugged into
this stimulation feedback loop actualize an iterating, extruding and extending
nervous system/network and node in the theatre of operations.
Stelarc's body of work (sic), originating in From Macro to Micro and the Betweeniv,
through his renowned suspension events during the seventies and eighties along
with his development of the third hand in Japan subsequently re-articulated
as a virtual arm robot manipulator at CITRI in 1992, demonstrate an adamantine
tenacity and rigour to tackle and extend the body as a site for proto-cyborg
experiments and theatrical/theoretical posturing and gestural re-figuration
within the post McLuhan mediascape utilising all the implications and modalities
of Ted Nelson's development of hypertext. Like Philip Brophy once remarked in
Art Network'83 on the Essendon Airport red flexi-disc, "Rhizome is a big
word".
© Brecon Walsh June 1996
MESH film/video/multimedia/art #10,MESH is published by Experimenta Media Arts