STELARC: meat, metal & code: the cadaver, the comatose & the chimera

Tuesday 19 February 2013

5:00-7:00pm

CRASSH

Alison Richard Building
West Road
Cambridge

The Cambridge Screen Media Group at CRASSH welcomes the performance artist, STELARC, famous for exploring the capacities and limits of the human body through art. A unique opportunity to experience his work in person!

All welcome; followed by what promises to be a truly unique Q&A.

ABSTRACT: We are increasingly expected to perform in Mixed and Augmented Realities. We are no longer merely biological bodies but increasingly accelerated by our machines and enhanced by our instruments. And we have to manage data in virtual systems. We have become extended operational systems, performing beyond the boundaries of our skin and beyond the local space we inhabit. As well as Circulating Flesh it is now an age of Fractal and Phantom Flesh.

Cost: free

Stelarc: Psycho Cyber (1996)





STELARC: THE MAN WITH THREE EARS (2009)

Specialisation is for Insects

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying. Take orders, give orders, co-operate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialisation is for insects". - Robert Heinlein

I would add play a musical instrument, dance and have a command of at least two languages. 

Implanting Ability

On October 29th my youngest son will be having cochlear implants surgically attached to and inserted into his body. He is practically almost deaf at the moment. The implants will not be activated until late November. The prospect of surgery and a demanding and long process of rehabilitation is both exciting and frightening. What really strikes me is the level of technology involved and how much it hopefully will help Ben.

In the context of Ben having implants is the amazing world of the transhuman. Today I was made aware of a new online magazine, h+ (PDF) which deals with the broader issues around the transhuman, I suppose in the sense of posthumanism:

Humanity Plus (formerly the World Transhumanist Association) – in collaboration with former Mondo 2000 editor RU Sirius -- is pleased to present h+. A web-based quarterly magazine, h+ covers the scientific, technological, and cultural developments that are challenging and overcoming human limitations. Recently, there has been a growing and evolving public discourse about new technological trends and possibilities. Scientists and edge thinkers are talking about– and working on -- slowing or ending aging; body and brain enhancement; biological control of the genome and the evolutionary process; and the possibility of a technological singularity brought on by AI… to name just a few of the interests and obsessions of this new edge tech culture. h+ magazine is all over it.

Beautifully designed by virtual worlds artistic legend D.C. Spensley (AKA DanCoyote in Second Life), h+ is accessible, stylish, contemporary, and sometimes playful. h+ aims to provides an entry point for intelligent people to develop an awareness of this new technological paradigm, while also providing an outlet and a voice for those who are already hooked in to the "transhumanist" vision

.

It all seems a bit new at the moment. But a new world may be opening up here.