Biography

Stelarc is an Australian artist who has performed extensively in Japan, Europe and the USA, including new music, dance festivals and experimental theatre. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems and the Internet to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. This year he has done presentations, performances and participated in exhibitions in Australia, the UK, Italy, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Japan. He has used medical imaging, prosthetics, robotics, virtual reality systems and the internet to explore and extend the parameters of the body. He is known for the internal filming of his body, the twenty-seven suspension events using insertions into the skin, and constructing an electronic sculpture inserted inside the stomach cavity. In 1995 he received a three year Fellowship from The Visual Arts/ Craft Board, The Australia Council. In 1997 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. As artist-in-residence for Hamburg City in 1998 he completed his Exoskeleton Walking Machine project. In 2000 he was awarded an honorary Degree of Law by Monash University. He is now Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at The Nottingham Trent University, UK. His art is represented by the Sherman Galleries in Sydney. See his work on http://www.stelarc.va.com.au

Statement

„The body is an evolutionary architecture that operates and becomes aware in the world. To alter its architecture is to adjust its awareness. The body has always been a prosthetic body, one augmented by its instruments and machines. There has always been a danger of the body behaving involuntarily and of being conditioned automatically. A Zombie is a body that performs involuntarily, that does not have a mind of its own. A Cyborg is a human-machine system. There has always been a fear of the involuntary and the automated. Of the Zombie and the Cyborg: we fear what we have always been and what we have already become?.”

from: From Zombies to Cyborg Bodies: Extra Ear, Exoskeleton and Avatars

Explorations in Art and Technology, 2002