Word: stelarc
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...Stelarc is a living example of the strange and surprising ways technology is getting onto - and under - our skin. Researchers in Europe, America and Japan are implanting electrodes into the bodies of patients to restore vision, treat brain disorders and help victims of paralysis regain motor function, while engineers are creating hybrid prosthetic body parts such as ankles, legs and knees in which silicon chips are melded with living tissue. Computers are moving off the desktop - and making our bodies bionic...
During one 1998 performance, Stelarc wired himself up directly to the Internet. His body was dotted with electrodes - on his deltoids, biceps, flexors, hamstrings and calf muscles - that delivered gentle electric shocks, just enough to nudge the muscles into involuntary contractions. The electrodes were connected to a computer, which was in turn linked via the Internet to computers in Paris, Helsinki and Amsterdam. By pressing various parts of a rendering of a human body on a touch screen, participants at all three sites could make Stelarc do whatever they wished...
...Stelarc believes this kind of merger between man and machine will soon make its way from performance art venues into our living rooms. "Just as the Internet provides interactive ways of displaying information," he says, "it may allow unexpected ways of accessing the body itself. What will be interesting is when we can miniaturize these technologies and implant them directly into the body...
...What Stelarc, who began his career in the 1960s as a "failed painter," is doing out of artistic choice, Brian Holgersen, a 30-year-old Danish tetraplegic, is doing out of physical necessity. For Holgersen, technology has already become a part of his body. Eight years ago, on a motorcycle trip to the U.K. to visit his sister, he was in an accident and broke his neck. Except for some minor movement in his shoulders, left arm and left hand, he was paralyzed below the neck. Holgersen underwent an experimental surgical procedure to implant a neural prosthesis - an interface between...
Computer pioneer Norbert Wiener once advised, "Render unto man the things which are man's and unto the computer the things which are the computer's." As the experiences of people like Stelarc, Brian Holgersen and Marie show, it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference...