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Arilynn · 04-15-2009, 09:57 AM

The NY Times reports about an artist who...I can't summarize it:

From the NY Times: Hello Van Gogh, Can you Hear Me Now?

Quote:

Luckily for us, the Australian performance artist known as Stelarc, formerly Stelios Arcadiou, is not prone to sensationalism.

He only wants to transform his body into a portal on the Internet. Which is why visitors to Exit Art, a gallery in Midtown Manhattan, are being treated to a video of Stelarc’s left arm being cut up like a rare tenderloin to implant what will eventually be a Bluetooth-enabled artificial ear.

Stelarc’s video is one the more grisly highlights of “Corpus Extremus (LIFE+),” an exhibit about the wonders and horrors of “PostNatural History,” and the ways in which technology is blurring the traditional notions of life, death and identity.
...
The ear on his arm, he said, is a work in progress that has required a couple of surgeries so far. It took him 12 years to find the doctors and the financing, which was provided by the Discovery Channel as part of a series in experimental surgery, to do the work.

The doctors, Stelarc said, were a little dubious that this was art. “They were overheard discussing, though, that perhaps they were really the artists and my body was just the canvas!” he said in an e-mail message.

The ear was originally slated for the outside of his left arm, but during the process of stretching the skin to provide space for the ear, a necrosis developed and the ear’s location had to move. In 2006, as shown in the gallery video, surgeons in Los Angeles installed a porous polyethylene ear-shaped prosthesis in his forearm and then snugged his skin down over it. At the same time, he says, they installed a tiny microphone, which picked up the doctor’s voices even through bandages and a face mask.

Unfortunately the microphone became seriously infected and had to be removed. “I could have lost an arm for an ear,” Stelarc said.

Stelarc’s own tissues and blood vessels have since grown into the prosthesis, anchoring it permanently. More surgeries are planned to improve its sculptural relief, including adding a bag of his own stem cells for an earlobe.

“The ear visualizes that idea that we can now engineer additional organs, Internet-enabled, to better function in the technological terrain that we now inhabit,” he said. “It is also an image of excess, of ambivalence and of the alternate.”

Once the microphone is reinstalled, Stelarc said, anything it “hears” will be wirelessly transmitted to the Web. Someone in Paris could log in and hear what Stelarc is up to in Australia — or presumably hear him snoring.

**Vertigo Paris** · 04-15-2009, 10:01 AM

I want to know how people think these things up? I mean seriously!

Rose Alba Karuna · 04-15-2009, 10:14 AM

Dude is a total exhibitionist.

Personally the worst part of this art is this:

Quote:

Once the microphone is reinstalled, Stelarc said, anything it “hears” will be wirelessly transmitted to the Web. Someone in Paris could log in and hear what Stelarc is up to in Australia — or presumably hear him snoring.

It would really suck to be his partner.

Raindrop Drinkwater · 04-15-2009, 10:21 AM

What next? Eyes on the dick?

**Vertigo Paris** · 04-15-2009, 10:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raindrop Drinkwater

What next? Eyes on the dick?

Rev Eponym · 04-15-2009, 10:54 AM

This really deserves a pic.

As to where he got the idea, it may be related to an already established method for regrowing body parts that have been too damaged to reattach to their original site. I did hear of an English guy who got an ear torn off in a pub brawl, and since they couldn't reattach it to his head, they stitched it to his hand, to give both sites the chance to heal up for a few months before doing the reattachment surgery. The end of the story was, the guy hadn't yet bothered to show up to have the ear re-placed.

And yeah, Stelarc's a ho' for his art.
.

04-15-2009, 10:54 AM	#6 (permalink)
Rev Eponym Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Dallas, Tejas Posts: 2,152 My Mood: SLShopper Ads: 6 SL Join Date: Feb 2006 Business: MadScience Laboratories	This really deserves a pic. As to where he got the idea, it may be related to an already established method for regrowing body parts that have been too damaged to reattach to their original site. I did hear of an English guy who got an ear torn off in a pub brawl, and since they couldn't reattach it to his head, they stitched it to his hand, to give both sites the chance to heal up for a few months before doing the reattachment surgery. The end of the story was, the guy hadn't yet bothered to show up to have the ear re-placed. And yeah, Stelarc's a ho' for his art. . __________________ MadScience Laboratories: Theoretical and applied fetish research The MadScience Blog, unsafe for any workplace. Magnetic soundtrack shielding currently untested.

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