Events

EXCESS AND INDIFFERENCE: Embodiment, Aliveness and Agency, invited talk by Stelarc

Stelarc
Stelarc

Date: 25 May 2023 13:00 - 14:00

Location: Fogg Lecture Theatre, G.E. Fogg Building, Mile End Road, London, E1 4DQ Map 

EXCESS AND INDIFFERENCE: Embodiment, Aliveness and Agency

Invited talk by Stelarc, an artist who pioneered movement augmentation

In person in the Fogg Lecture Theatre or Online via Teams

Abstract

The body in excess has become a contemporary chimera of meat, metal and code. In the technological terrain of that it now inhabits the body requires sensory, machinic and computational augmentation. And in this age of body hacking, gene mapping, prosthetic augmentation, organ swapping, face transplants and synthetic skin, what it means to be a body and what it means to be human and what generates aliveness and agency becomes problematic.

Biography

Stelarc's projects experiment and perform with alternative anatomical architectures. He has performed with a Third Hand, a Stomach Sculpture and Exoskeleton, a 6-legged walking robot. With Fractal Flesh his body was remotely choreographed online using a touch-screen muscle stimulation system. In 2006 an ear was surgically constructed on his arm. Re-Wired / Re-Mixed was a performance visually and acoustically sharing senses and distributing agency. The StickMan exoskeleton algorithmically actuates his body for the 5-hour performance. And for the 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Reclining StickMan, an interactive and interactive 9m long, 4m high stick-figure robot was engineered, actuated by pneumatic rubber muscles. In 2010 he was awarded the Ars Electronica Golden Nica Hybrid Arts Prize. In 2015 he received the Australia Council's Emerging and Experimental Arts Award. He has been awarded Honarary Doctorates from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Monash University, Melbourne and the Ionian University in Corfu.

Arranged by:  QMUL
Contact:  Ildar Farkhatdinov
Email:  i.farkhatdinov@qmul.ac.uk

Updated by: David Lockwood