igargoyle: November 2004 Archives

November 30, 2004

Bots on the Move

[From The ARQuake Photo Gallery which is a part of the Tinmith augmented reality project]

Posted by nym at 10:15 PM | TrackBack

November 15, 2004

New Geography Con

[from Rich Gibson's Photos]

A GeoWanker friend of mine, Mike Liebhold organized the New Geography confrence with the Institute for the Future. Tech writer, Howard Rheingold wrote up his take of the "locative experience" which included a psychogeographic walk using tablet PCs and Chris Goad's maps from his company Map Bureau.

'Together with a busload of other geoweb neophytes, I found myself carrying a GPS-equipped tablet PC around a decommissioned army base overlooking the Golden Gate. I clicked on one of the hotspots on the photomap of our location. A note popped up -- from the late, great Jerry Garcia, who had been quoted in print about the place we were exploring because Fort Scott in San Francisco's Presidio is where Garcia served in the army in his pre-Dead and predead days.' [The Geoweb and Deep Place]

Pictured to the right is one of the maps the group used, which is a really great example of what geotagging can bring out about the world around us.

[The Geoweb and Deep Place. Thanks Mike!]

Posted by nym at 03:22 PM | TrackBack

November 14, 2004

Ken Stelarc

Stelarc[1].jpg A Brit named Zoe Khamsin came up with this cyborg art based on the very cool cyborg artist, Stelarc.

'This project was inspired by a lecture regarding the future of children's toys. By combining a traditional 'Barbie and Ken' Ken doll with Stelarc's unique cyborg inspired 'art', I created a doll with all the attributes of a cyborg.' [Ken Stelarc]

I wonder if Zoe Khamsin will make a toy 3rd arm under this vein. How about a Ken Stelarc EXOSKELETON to go with the Barbie Dreamhouse?

[Ken Stelarc via cofuturist blogger Regine at Near Near Future]

Posted by nym at 01:16 PM | TrackBack

November 07, 2004

Stelarc, Cyborg Artist

Just found a series of links about an interesting cyborg-artist, who has been working in performance art since the 1970s. BMEZine has an article about his earlier work with suspensions, but I think you'll appreciate his more cyborganic experimentations:

'In these times of health fascism and body image disorder, even the most toned-up can always find something that needs a little more work. But hardly anyone can be prepared to take things as far as the Australian performance artist Stelarc. When he looks in the mirror in the morning, he sees a body that isn't so much out of condition as obsolete, something that doesn't need a weekly workout so much a total workover. "The only was I see is that the body is mass produced but at the moment it doesn't have any replaceable parts. OK, we're making artificial organs. But this is just a medical approach. What we really need is a design approach. If you have a heart that wears out after 70 years, this to me is an engineering problem. We should start to re-engineer the body."' [from Stelarc, Cyberhuman? by [email protected] / I-D Magazine]

And from CTHEORY:

'Stelarc's art, often referred to as cyborg experiments, integrates inorganic matter with his body by renewing the neural activity that maintains equilibrium. By extending his body through heuristic machines, Stelarc redesigns and remaps perception. While his suspension events are worthy of debate, Stelarc's later experiments with multimedia stimuli and the body and ideas concerning artificial intelligence will be the objects of focus. Ping Body an Internet Actuated and Uploaded Performance and ParaSite for Invaded and Involuntary Body are performances that occurred from 1995-98 and his artificial life experiment Movatar an Inverse Motion Capture System is on-going.

The objectification of the body, a theory that informs Stelarc's cyborg experiments, is not actually a modern idea. The body as a machine, is a theory that is tied to the work of the seventeenth century thinker Rene Descartes.[3] In 1637, Descartes published the Discourse on Method . The body is composed of only mechanical functioning, wrote Descartes. The body and mind were distinctly separate for Descartes, who thought the body a machine, to be informed by the higher order rationality of the mind, that was imbued with pneuma (breath of God or soul).[4] Stelarc's body and mind have been hollowed out from this dualistic theory. It does not mean he is an atheist, as if his mind or soul does not exist. Rather, he revitalizes the body with respect to consciousness.' [The Body Without Memory: An Interview with Stelarc by Mark Fernandes]

Selarc's experiments seem similar in many regards to the work of The Psymbiote and Steve Mann. I sure hope Stelarc brings his peformances to Los Angeles!

[Official website, Recent peformances via snfg on del.icio.us/tag/cyborg/]

Posted by nym at 02:38 PM | TrackBack