Stelarc
The Monograph
Published on 28. September 2007
Book
Paperback/Softback
280 pages
978-0-262-69360-8 (ISBN)
Description
A user's guide to Stelarc, the international performance artist whose extreme performances explore the borderland between bodies and machines.Stelarc is the most celebrated artist in the world working within technology and the visual arts. He is both an artist and a phenomenon, using his body as medium and exhibition space. Working in the interface between the body and the machine, employing virtual reality, robotics, medical instruments, prosthetics, and the Internet, Stelarc's art includes physical acts that don't always look survivable-or, as science fiction novelist William Gibson puts it in his foreword, "sometimes seem to include the possibility of terminality."Stelarc's projects include Third Hand, a grasping and wrist rotating mechanism with a rudimentary sense of touch that is attached to the artist and activated by EMG from other body areas; Amplified Body, in which the artist performs acoustically with his brainwaves, muscles, pulse, and blood flow signals; and the Stomach Sculpture, a device-or "aesthetic adornment"-placed in the artist's stomach and presented through video. Works in progress include the Extra Ear Project, a soft prosthesis of skin and cartilage to be constructed on the artist's arm. Stelarc's work both reflects and determines new directions in performance art and body art. Although there have been hundreds of articles written about Stelarc since he began performing in the late 1960s, Stelarc: The Monograph is the first comprehensive study of Stelarc's work practice in over thirty years. Gathering a range of writers who approach the work from a variety of perspectives, it includes William Gibson's account of his meetings with Stelarc, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker's emphatic "WE ARE ALL STELARCS NOW," and Stelarc himself in conversation with Marquard Smith. Taken together, these writers give us a multiplicity of ways to think about Stelarc.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
122 s/w Abbildungen
122 b&w illus.
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 203 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
680 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-69360-8 (9780262693608)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Marilouise Kroker is Senior Research Scholar at the University of Victoria.
Marquard Smith is Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster, London. He is a Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Visual Culture.
Julie Clarke has written widely on the posthuman and the visual arts.
Jane Goodall is Director of Research in the College of Arts, Education, and Social Sciences at the University of Western Sydney.
Timothy Druckrey is an independent curator and writer and editor of Ars Electronica: Facing the Future (MIT Press, 1999). He lectures internationally on the social impact of digital media, the transformations of representation, and communication in interactive and networked environments.
Arthur Kroker is Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture, and Theory at the University of Victoria.
Stelarc is a leading international performance artist.
William Gibson is the author of many books, including Neuromancer and, most recently, Pattern Recognition.
Amelia Jones is Professor and Pilkington Chair in the History of Art at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada (MIT Press, 2004), Postmodernism and the En-Gendering of Marcel Duchamp and Body Art/Performing the Subject, among other books.
Marquard Smith is Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster, London. He is a Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Visual Culture.
Julie Clarke has written widely on the posthuman and the visual arts.
Jane Goodall is Director of Research in the College of Arts, Education, and Social Sciences at the University of Western Sydney.
Timothy Druckrey is an independent curator and writer and editor of Ars Electronica: Facing the Future (MIT Press, 1999). He lectures internationally on the social impact of digital media, the transformations of representation, and communication in interactive and networked environments.
Arthur Kroker is Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture, and Theory at the University of Victoria.
Stelarc is a leading international performance artist.
William Gibson is the author of many books, including Neuromancer and, most recently, Pattern Recognition.
Amelia Jones is Professor and Pilkington Chair in the History of Art at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada (MIT Press, 2004), Postmodernism and the En-Gendering of Marcel Duchamp and Body Art/Performing the Subject, among other books.