Melanitis : 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...
moreMelanitis : 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 So, for those reasons the body is obsolete.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.
