art between body and machine

8/13/2019 Art Between Body and Machine

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Art Between Body and Machine

One of the artists that splices together body and machine most spectacularlyis the Australian performance artist, Stelarc. Thats why this article starts witha look into Stelarcs universe of robot parts and electrified human flesh. Butthe relationship between human and machine is not an uncommon theme in20th century art. So this article contains material on some of Stelarcsrelatives in the history of art.

Stelarc: the body as an object

The Australian performance artist Stelarc uses his own body in performancesin which his body is connected to electrodes which create what Stelarchimself calls involuntary movements via electric signals. The body jerks,quite simply. On one occasion, the jerks were brought about via the internet.At the end of the eighties, Stelarc gave a performance called the third hand,in which a robot arm was connected to his stomach area and moved bymuscular contractions. In other performances, Stelarc walks around in agigantic robot-like skeleton that is built around his body and which moves in

close coordination with his body.

Stelarc belongs to a breed of modern artists who are not reticent aboutinvolving art directly in social debate. Actually, Stelarc contributes himself,since he supplements his performances with philosophical commentary on thefuture of the body and the human being with technology. He is especiallyfamous for his statement that the body is obsolete. Just as radically, heconsistently refers to his own body not as my body but simply as body,thereby questioning the status and limits of the body. The body is seen assomething that one can manipulate with technology, just like other things.

In Stelarcs Stomach Sculpture from 1993, the body is represented as a thing,a material place and a material that one can work with. Here Stelarc placed a


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small, umbrella-like apparatus in his stomach. The Sculpture was self-illuminating and emitted sounds. One could say that this stomach sculpturewas a simple but groundbreaking way in which the interior of the body couldbe used as a general objective space.

Stelarcs philosophical superstructure to his own art is a kind of resistance towhat he jokingly called ergonomic correctness, in other words, the notionthat technology should be adapted to the natural human body, rather like afoot-shaped shoe. Instead, Stelarc argues that the body has to be recreatedon technologys terms if the human being is to be able to match the newopportunities and life conditions that technology offers.

Stelarc: liberation and objectification

Ideologically, Stelarc is very close to - if not right in the middle of -transhumanism. Both Stelarc and the transhumanists want, in principle,

unlimited optimisation of the human body through merging it with robot parts,artificial intelligence, etc. But the transhumanists have a liberal starting point.They want to promote the individuals freedom and autonomy.

In his theoretical writings, Stelarc, like the transhumanists, has afundamentally liberal attitude that is inspired by technology. But severalconnoisseurs of Stelarcs art believe that Stelarcs exercise of his art hisperformancesare more ambiguous and open to interpretation. One of theseis Professor of Art History at rhus University, Jacob Wamberg.

Its an open question what he means when he stands there with the thirdhand and his body jerking. Is it technology that is taking him over: is hebecoming a slave of technology or is there a more harmonious developmentof a symbiosis between human and machine?

Jacob Wamberg understands Stelarcs concept of a split personality as abroad hint that Stelarcs art might well illustrate the free individual who candeal with his body in a high-handed way. But at the same time, andparadoxically enough, Stelarcs art functions as a metaphor for the extremesurrender of individual freedom, because in some performances the body isinvoluntarily controlled by someone other than the person who owns the

body, i.e. someone other than Stelarc himself.In Stelarcs art, the body is portrayed as a thing among other thingslike aforeign object placed freely at the disposal of the I or a subject that isconnected to the body. But in this, Stelarc takes the consequences anddemonstrates how the body can be linked to other subjects. Tentatively, itsan artistic night vision of a soul that has lost its privileged connection to onespecific body. Now the body is not my body, but belongs just as much to theothers.

Stelarc: the ethics of hospitality or the bodyscontinued degradation?

The openness and ambiguity of Stelarcs works of art can be clearly seen in


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that the interpreters of his work are divided into two almost diametricallyopposed camps?

There are those that think that Stelarcs art breaks down false handed-downdividing lines between body and soul, individual and environment in a

liberating and/or consciousness-expanding way.Conversely, there are others who say that Stelarcs instrumentalisation ofthe body goes hand in hand with a mechanical understanding of the corporealand a view of human consciousness and identity as something other (andmore valuable) than the humans body.

These opposing interpretations of Stelarcs performances are, in essence,about identity and about the relationship between human consciousness andthe environment that surrounds the human being.

A whole book, called The Cyborg Experiments is dedicated to the various

interpretations of Stelarcs and Orlans art. Orlan is an artist who exposes hisbody to extreme aesthetic surgery. For example, he has had two small hornsimplanted in his forehead.

In the book, Joanna Zylinska says that Stelarc, through his prosthetic artdemonstrates a kind of hospitality by bidding another (technology) and others(subjects) welcome to the limits of his own body. She believes that Stelarcsart shows an ethic that breaks the image of an isolated, autocratic subject in afruitful way: These conceptual changes alter the way in which we defineidentity, because they allow for the occurrence of less bound and moreconnected models of human subjectivity.

In contrast with Zylinska, Meredith Jones and Zo Sofia find a perverseCartesianism in Stelarcs art. That is, that Stelarc leans against Descartesphilosophy, where the subject or consciousness is something separated fromthe body. Stelarc goes in for a perverse Cartesianism in whichconsciousness and cognitive knowledge is shown (behind and on the stage)for the purpose of surrendering control of the body.

Jones and Sofia are also interested in physical pain, which is part of bothStelarcs and Orlans practice of their art. They compare Stelarcs and Orlans

use of the body with the religious and extreme physical rituals that werewidespread in the middle ages. In Stelarcs own words, the body issuspended in some of his performances, and as he says: The [suspended]body suffers great pain. According to Jones and Sofia, this physical pain canbe compared with that of the flagellant who torments his body in order toprove hisspiritualrelationship of belonging to Christ. Instead, Stelarc (andhis audience) are in the process of proving theirspiritualrelationship ofbelonging to secular ideals about beauty, agency, technology, progress andevolution.

Beauty between human and nature

The mastery of both internal and external nature has been an important


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theme throughout the history of art. The German philosopher Hegel wrote inthe 19th century about the romantic landscape painters that they were tryingto remove the otherness of nature by making it into a scenic stage for spiritualmovement. The newest cyborg art by the performance artist Stelarc can alsobe seen as a link in the story of how art portrays the humans relationship to

the world. It is a story that has its beginning way back in the Renaissance.

In 1336, the Renaissance humanist Petrarch climbed Mont Ventoux inProvence. He wrote a letter about his ascent to his friend. Later, this lettercame to be regarded as one of the earliest expressions of Renaissancehumanism. Petrarchs mountain walk also came to be regarded as epoch-making because he climbed the mountain for pleasure, to enjoy the view.

Petrarchs mountain climb is a broad starting point for a description of theaesthetic enjoyment of nature as landscape, as a view. In Petrarchs letterabout the experience, he writes that his wonder at the earthly beauty put him

in such a spiritual mood that he had an urge to read a book that he hadbrought with him containing the church father St. Augustines Confessions.At the top of the mountain Petrarch went from enjoyment of the externalmagnificence to internal reflection on the nature of the soul.

In an article from 1974, the German philosopher Joachim Ritter usesPetrarchs ascent of Mont Ventoux as a representation ofthe idea that manmust first have a controlling, distanced relationship with nature in order toenjoy it aesthetically as an individual, i.e. as a landscape. Petrarchswithdrawal from earthly beauty to internal spiritual reflection shows aconnection between perceiving oneself as an autonomous individual and theability to regard nature as a landscape, view and scene on which internalemotion can be reflected.

How is the perception of a beautiful natural landscapeas a complementaryadjunct to the autonomous subjectrelevant to modern cyborg art? Thisperception is relevant to the degree that cyborg art in itself puts the stablerelationship between the human subject and the material environment on theline.

Cyborgartists at the beginning of the 20th century

Professor of Art History at rhus University, Jacob Wamberg, says it in thisway: I believe, that when the actual perception of the individual is challenged,as I believe it has been during the whole of the 20th century, towards a moreporous understanding of the individual, which links itself to the environment indifferent ways, then this also affects the concept of art. Art has moved andbecome something more objectified, a part of reality.

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) has a place in the history of art as the personwho first began to bring everyday objects into the art gallery. But before theinvention of so-called ready mades Duchamp painted pictures. The most

famous of these pictures Nude descending a staircase, No 2 createdconsternation at an exhibition in New York in 1913.


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In an article about the development of cyborg art, Bruce Greenville writesabout Marcel Duchamps picture: There can be no doubt that Duchampsallusion to the human machine was not only a threat to public aesthetic tastebut also a threat to the general understanding of the human body and its

physical limits. Here was a body separated in the literal sense of the word,and its machine function was defining for how it was to be represented.

Marcel Duchamps picture says something about his interest in the humanbody as a mechanical quantity. The form language of the painting is inspiredby cubism and futurism. But the sequencing of the bodys movements isinspired by the photographer Etienne-Jules Marey, who studied the humanbodys phases of movement in thousands of pictures. The paintings brownmonochrome nuances and the reduction of the body to elementary formshelps to underline the machine and robot-like impression.

We see an even greater fascination with the machine and the mechanical infuturism which, like Marcel Duchamp, was active during the early 20thcentury. Here the idiom speaks, where movement is painted into the picture,of an obvious enthusiasm for technology and progress.

Fernand Leger (1881-1955) also related in his art to the relationship betweenhuman and machine. The avant garde film of 1923-24, Ballet mcanique,reflects an untraditional mechanically-inspired rhythm. The film uses livingpictures to suggest similarities between human and machine.

Read moreThe cyborg in early literatureExternal linksInformation about Marcel Duchamp in WikipediaWebsite for StelarcThe Australian performance artist Stelarc
http://etiskraad.dk/en/Temauniverser/Homo-Artefakt/Artikler/Kulturhistorie/Cyborgen%20i%20den%20tidlige%20litteratur.aspxhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamphttp://v2.stelarc.org/http://v2.stelarc.org/http://v2.stelarc.org/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamphttp://etiskraad.dk/en/Temauniverser/Homo-Artefakt/Artikler/Kulturhistorie/Cyborgen%20i%20den%20tidlige%20litteratur.aspx

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