Stelarc

Stelarc is an Australian performance artist. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems and the Internet to explore, extend and enhance the body's parameters.

 

He has performed with technological appendixes (the Third Hand, operated by means of EMG signals). He has filmed the inside of his lungs, colon and stomach (Stomach Sculpture, a mechanism operating in the cavity of the stomach, which self-illuminates, generates sounds, opens and closes, extends and retracts). He has done twenty five body "suspensions" with insertions into the skin, in different positions and varying situations in remote locations. For Fractal Flesh, as part of Telepolis, he developed an interfaced Muscle Stimulation System, enabling remote access, actuation and choreography of the body (Italian premiere of Fractal Flesh. Split body, organised by Ernesto L. Francalanci, Beyond the Sculpture, Padua, 1995). Performances such as Ping Body and Parasite probe notions of telematic scaling and the engineering of external, extended and virtual nervous systems using the Internet.

 

Recently he completed Exoskeleton, a 6-legged walking machine with which he will perform in Bolzano/Bozen. In 1995 Stelarc received a three year Fellowship from The Visual Arts/ Craft Board of The Australia Council. In 1997 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. In 1998 he was appointed a Research Consultant for the Faculty of Art and Design at the Nottingham Trent University. His art is represented by the Sherman Galleries in Sydney.

 

 

Exoskeleton, Event for Extended Body
and Walking Machine

EXOSKELETON: a six-legged, pneumatically powered walking machine has been constructed as an extension for the body, which, with either ripple or tripod gait, moves forwards, backwards, sideways and turns on the spot.

 

It can also squat and lift by splaying or contracting its legs. The performer’s body is positioned on a turn-table, activating and controlling the machine legs by means of inclination sensors and micro-switches placed on an exoskeleton on the performer’s upper body and arms.

 

The left arm is an extended arm with pneumatic manipulator having 11 degrees-of-freedom. It is human-like in form but with additional functions. The fingers open and close, becoming multiple grippers. There is individual flexion of the fingers, with thumb and wrist rotation. The body actuates the walking machine by moving its arms. Different gestures make different motions - a translation of limb to mechanic leg motions.

 

The performer's arms guide the choreography of the locomotor's movements and thus compose the cacophony of pneumatic and mechanical and sensor modulated sounds....