STELARC

INTERVIEW BY MELANITIS YIANNIS

Melanitis : Ok Stelarc , it's nice to meet you in Greece .

Stelarc : Thanks .

M : First let's talk about the body which you consider as an overloaded space of information that reacts in a spasmodic way... You have talked about the realisation of the moment that the body becomes obsolete . Do you consider this realisation as a start , as the beginning of something ?

S : Well , I think that in enduring all of these performances what became apparent was the obsolescence of the body . Not to see the body as a means by which you could be empowered but rather as a structure that has physiological and psychological limitations .The experience of doing the performances was the realisation that the body was obsolete - that in doing these actions you didn't have the experience that you were empowering the human body or that these were some kind of pseudo-scientific explorations of the body - rather these performances revealed the psychological and physical limitations . So the body over two thousand years of accumulating information, this mad Aristotelian urge to accumulate more and more information ,quantitatively but now also qualitatetivly the body cannot subjectively analyse and creatively process information . So, for example , we can measure nano-seconds , billionths of the second , we can measure light years , the distance of nebulae but we can't subjectively experience this information . Information is alien to our bodies, to our biological bodies without the intervention of instrument . Also we construct machines that perform faster, more precisely and much more powerfully than the human body. So machines often out perform humans. Technology has accelerated the human body, the body attains planetary escape velocity and now the body finds itself unplugged from its biosphere and without a lot of technological paraphernalia it can't survive in these alien environments off the earth . So, for those reasons the body is obsolete. But you are looking at a body now that if its' internal temperature varies three or four degrees it's in serious health risk, if it loses 10% of it's body fluids it's dead! So the body's survival parameters are very slim. The body can only live minutes without air , a week without water , maybe a month without food . It only averages 70 years in good health and it's a problem if you are already 50! ------ ( Laughter )

M : After all , how do you experience yourself inside these constructed environments you create as a part of data flux or as a conscious operator ?

S : Although the earlier performances were physically difficult , the more recent ones are technically complex and when the body is plugged into this complex system of feedback loops , of images of data , of the body being hard -wired to the machinery , then at it's more successful moments there is a kind of synergistic symbiosis where you really do lose a sense of self and become part of this operating system and the body then in this flux of data flow , the body immersed in these images , the body directing the movements of a six-legged walking machine or even being the host for an internal sculpture - there were moments in those performances where the technology and the body come together to form one coherent and collaborating system of parts ...

M : ... a cyborg ...

S : Well , that's right ... I mean ... instead of saying a "cyborg" though , as a kind of medical - military model , as a kind of Terminator 2 cyborg , as a body with it's organs ripped out and replaced by technological parts , imagine a cyborg being rather a multiplicity of bodies spatially separated but electronically connected to other bodies in other places , with the Internet as a crude external nervous system and in this way a cyborg body becomes this extended operational system of collaborating parts .

M : So , can we speak for the "intent of the cyborg " ?... I mean , where is the intent when you do not exactly realise where the data is coming from , is it from the inside or the outside?

S : Well , the thing is , of course , it 's an interesting question because I 've always felt that making a decision of human intention or human agency is not the simple decision made by an ego-driven body ... In other words , is it meaningful to consider locating the mind inside a body anymore and , even more radically , is it meaningful to consider having a mind at all , in the traditional metaphysical sense ...? So we can construct intelligence and awareness as not necessarily something that happens your body or inside my body but rather that which happens between us in the medium of language within which we communicate, in the social institutions within which we operate, in the cultures that we 've been conditioned to at this point of time in our history and so on ... and that depends on how our point of view or frame of reference... So the issue of choice, the issue of free agency is a questionable one! We 've always been afraid of zombies because seemingly they have no mind of their own, they perform involuntarily, they may be controlled by someone else . We also are very anxious about the idea of the cyborg , which is a body that is increasingly automated , mechanised , so we fear the zombie , we fear the cyborg , but we actually fear what we have always been and what we have already become.

M : There have been major advances in robotics the previous years. However, this huge progress seems to slow down at present , probably because all essential steps have already been achieved . You consider the cyborg as a system which interacts in an environment of new experiences. So extending my previous question, could you speak for the "consciousness" of the cyborg " ?

S : Well, I don't think, I mean ..., with the speculation you shouldn't see it as a kind of " either - or " situation ... and it is speculation , it is not a dogmatic formulation of some utopian vision . In other words, when we talk about redesigning the body , when we talk about the idea of the cyborg it can have many forms and other functions , so one scenario is the medical - military idea of the cyborg body , another one is the the cyborg system that I talked about ... of remote connected and collaborating bodies. There is another one where micro-miniaturised technology, you know, in the form of nano- machines, micro-miniaturised technology that can be inserted inside the body ... and in that situation a lot of technology in the future will be invisible because it will be inside the body. The body will become a host for micro-miniaturised machines, the body becomes a host, not only for virus and bacteria but also for a colony of nano-machines. We can recolonise the human body. We can construct better surveillance systems for the interior structure, for this alternate body that becomes a host. The body becomes the landscape of machines, machines are no longer in the human horizon but within the human body itself.

M : Nevertheless the body is still a place that gives unpredictable outputs, an unpredictable field of possibilities ... Machines , on the contrary , are usually considered to be quite predictable...

S : Yeah , but some machines are not very predictable... --- (Laughter) Well , of course , that's an argument about whether machines could become truly intelligent or conscious , that machines are , you know, automated and human beings are unpredictable therefore human beings might be more creative and human beings might be more aware . But there is another way of looking at that, you see , instead of..., that's with the meta-physical assumption that there is some inner essence in the body. As I said , the other way of looking at it is to... , for example studying insects : insects don't have big brains but they have survived the longest . They do this because they have some hard-wired instinctual behaviour . If a small robot has a pressure sensor, a proximity sensor , a heat sensor and a light sensor , if it has those four or five sensors then it can survive in an unpredictable world with very little brain power . How does it do this? Well, if you think of intelligence or if you think of the complexity of behaviour not being the result of an internal brain but rather complexity of the environment that it inhabits. THE TERRAIN CONTOURS OUR BEHAVIOUR. So, in other words, the complexity of the real world generates an unpredictable behaviour in a little insect ! ...and if we see behaviour in this way , constructed by a complex environment , then a lot of our problems disappear philosophically .

M : This seems to be very necessary , you know , nowadays...

S : Yeah...

M : So the point is that dealing with " actions instead of theories " you actually experience something instead of being an external observer ... Wiener talked about a gap between mechanology and mechanology of communication . Is there a similar gap in our days between the electronic age and the bio-technological age ?

S : We 've made increasing advances in our instrumentations and electronic tools that biotechnology becomes possible , that genetic splicing becomes a common-day occurrence , that genetic modification in the future , especially with the genome project , the mapping of all the human genes and every day we read about some new part of the DNA structure that is involved with Alzheimer's or Huttigton's disease ... So I think ... I don't see this as a kind of discontinuity , I think that the age of mechanical engineering led to electrical engineering and that made computer technology possible and therefore more sophisticated software programming and so on ... One doesn't have to see it as a discontinuity or a dislocation and if we think of these as different technical strategies rather than thinking about particular technologies in themselves then it's a lot easier to understand . I mean , technology I think comes from the Greek word " τέχνη " meaning "skills " , so technology is not just about hardware but rather a way of skilfully manipulating , a way of technically modifying , a way of electronically constructing ...and , in this way , biotechnology becomes possible .

M : Does this cyborg demonstrate a positive power , potentially opposed to the passivity that Christianism proposes ? You told me you are an atheist in one of our previous conversations...

S : Well , yes , the more and more I do the less I think I have a mind of my own , certainly the idea of a self or a soul recedes further into the background and I guess if you can explain the world without resorting to fanciful theories then you should and I feel a lot of our science has gone about explaining phenomena and the physiology of the body which don't have to resort to those out- moded metaphysical assumptions ....

M : Yeah , ... considering the body as an agent in a data space it is the space that becomes questionable instead of the agent ... As E. Tzafesta said : " (Once) solving the problems of space the agent responds automatically " .

S : Well , that's one way of looking at it , that's what I was eluding to before when I said the complexity of your behaviour has probably more to do with the complexity of the environment than your internal , you know, DNA coding ... Of course the body is programmed with a certain genetic repertoire and this repertoire of movement , of behaviour, of stimulus and response is codified by society , by the culture we're brought up in... so then we bow in respect , we smile when we are pleased , we shake hands when we first meet someone ... These are codified rituals of behaviour that society sanctions and you 're encouraged to perform them . But that's ... it's sort of a kind of an arbitrary construct . It's not of necessity , it's but of contingency .

M : Moreover , each logical system has some indispensable inherent restrictions ...

S : I think any system or any structure allows a certain channelling of operation and energy but this is also conditional , I mean , if you want to travel at 100 km an hour you have to travel on the right side of the road , on a freeway , you have to stop at red lights and resume on green lights, you have to have a licence ... In other words , in an increasingly complex technological terrain there are more and more rules of conditioning , of constraint , of control but without these constrains and controls you wouldn't have the ability to move so fast . So , I see no dilemma about this issue of control . I mean , the issue of control in itself is not a bad thing , it's the political abuse and pathological human reasoning that results in some abuse of the system or some abuse of the cultural conditionings that are necessary for us to perform in extra-ordinary ways . We can't ..., I mean , if we're just simply running on foot we can't really cause a disaster even if we run into someone but if we are out of control in a car or if an aeroplane crashes then , of course , there are these very big disasters . Paul Virilio talks about this notion of the accident , that with every new technology there is a new kind of accident ... ------ ( Laughter )

M :That's why I would like to ask you about the new projects you are making now , the extra ear , which you were inspired by the MIT mouse with the ear on it's back ...

S : Actually , it has been a big problem to try to get that done . Firstly because it goes beyond the bounds of ordinary cosmetic surgery , in other words , it's not just about changing the shape of your lips or eyes or nose , OR whatever. This is really about more reconstructive surgical techniques . Using your own skin and cartridge from your ribcage it would be possible to construct an ear that looks like a human ear but it wouldn't have the functions of an ear . If you implanted a sound chip and a proximity sensor inside your ear anyone getting close to it would hear a sound . So , in other words , this ear wouldn't be able to hear but it would be able to speak to the person who is close to it . Or , if you saw this ear as a kind of Internet antenna : connected to a modem and a wearable computer this extra ear will be able to receive and transmit real audio sounds . This would augment the local sounds that the actual ears heard. So you 'd have this sort of "global mix " of real audio sounds with the local sounds of the REAL ears . This extra ear was a project that was begun one year and a half ago when I did a laser scan of my head at the Curtain University of Technology in Perth and that enabled me to construct a quite convincing life-like 3D model of the head with an extra ear and we made a gif animation so the head turns from the normal side to the side with the two ears and , I think , if this project is completed ... and , as far as I 'm concerned , it's not going to be interesting unless it is completed . I mean , I 'm not really concerned about simulation or presentation by computer modelling . What's intriguing is not only to simulate these possibilities but then to actually construct and to experience them . So the experience of these alternate interfaces is of importance .

M : So , what is the stance of the artist today? I mean , has it always been revolutionary ?

S : Well , I think , I 've always been uneasy about the artist as simply a craftsperson who just simply makes or produces cultural artifacts that are considered beautiful or sensitive or whatever ... What's intriguing more so is the artist who works with ideas , who uses their art as a means of exploring the personal and the public and who tries to get a sense of what it means to exist in the world ... and I 'm much happier that the artist is seen as a poet or a philosopher than as a craftsperson .

M : ...but , at the same time , "just as we are near the end of our physiology we 're at the end of our philosophy "... ------ ( Laughter )

S : Well, I think that's an appropriate quote of mine ...What I was trying to say when I said that , you know , just as we are near the end of our physiology we 're at the end of our philosophy is that idea that the body is a kind of architectural structure for awareness . If we were to redesign our bodies we would be redefining what it means to be human . Altering our architecture would mean adjusting our awareness in the world . So imagine the world of a dog that sees only in black and white or the world of a snake that only sees in heat patterns or the world of a bat that images the world in ultra-sound waves . So it's intriguing that human architecture structures our awareness and restricts our operation ... and ... Do we accept this biological status quo ? Or do we consider redefining the body , do we consider redesigning it , is the body seen as a prosthetic body with bits of technology attached to it ?... With the Movatar project the body itself becomes a prosthesis for the behaviour of an intelligent agent ... In other words what is being created is an inverse motion capture system where an intelligent ,autonomous and operational avatar would be able to perform in the real world by possessing a physical body ... and if electrodes were not only on its' legs but also on its' facial muscles then the avatar will not only be able to move and manipulate in the real world but it would also be able to express its' emotions by controlling the facial muscles of the human body . So here we have a situation where an absent , obsolete and invaded body performs involuntarily for avatars on the Internet ! ------- ( Laughter )

M : Exactly ... so , this is your latest project , right ? S : Yes , the intelligent avatar , the Movatar , is the most recent project and it will be first performed at Cyber Cultures in Sydney next August , so it has to be ready by then ...

M : Thank you ...

S : Me too...

Athens, 27. 11 . 1999 Athens School of Fine Art

Audio-typing and translation by Sevasti Despoina

The same interview is also at a-r-c

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