Stelarc, a Greek artist living and
working in Australia, work with the idea of body being an evolutionary, ever
changing, canvas that he manipulates with medical instruments, implants,
prosthetics, second life and robotics. “In 1995 Stelarc received a three year Fellowship from The Visual Arts/Craft Board, The Australia Council and in 2004 was awarded a two year New Media Arts Fellowship. In 1997 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. He was Artist-In-Residence for Hamburg City in 1997. In 2000 he was awarded an Honorary Degree of Laws by Monash University. He has completed Visiting Artist positions in Art and Technology, at the Faculty of Art and Design at Ohio State University in Columbus in 2002, 2003 & 2004. He has been Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit and a Visiting Professor at The Nottingham Trent University, UK. He is currently Chair in Performance Art, School of Arts, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK. He is also Senior Research Fellow and Visiting Artist at the MARCS Lab at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Stelarc's artwork is represented by the SCOTT LIVESEY GALLERIES in Melbourne (stelarch.org)."
Norman White, born in Texas,
currently lives in Canada as a teacher and practicing new media artist, has
helped pioneer the world of electronics and robotics in art. Both Stelarc and
Norman work with the idea of human interactions and actions, translating them
into mechanical robotics. While Stelarc is a performance artist and offers his
own body for his experimentation, Norman White is a sculptor who builds his
pieces to be unusual and interactive. “White grew up in and around Boston, Massachusetts, and obtained his B.A. in Biology from Harvard University in 1959. Originally planning to become a fisheries biologist, White changed his mind and decided to travel to places like New York City, San Francisco, London, and the Middle East during the 1960s. While living in San Francisco, he worked as an electrician at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard, and developed a fascination for electrical switching systems. In 1967, White moved to Toronto, Canada, where he began to build and experiment with kinetic electronics. He taught classes such as "Mechanics for Real Time Sculpture" as part of the Integrated Media Program of the Ontario College of Art & Design from 1978 to 2003 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_White).”
In Ping Body: An Internet Actuated and Uploaded Performance, Stelarc
wrapped his body with internet cables and electrodes, where electrically
charged involuntary movements manifest due to the stimulation caused by the
internet traffic. For a standard performance Stelarc, attaches a collection of
the electrode muscle stimulators all over his body, each capable of delivering
jolts up to 60 volts, and links them to the internet via the low level internet
ping protocol. “The ping protocol sends out electronic pings and measures the
round trip time until a response is heard back from a particular machine
connected to the internet.” His body is redesigned by technology he designed. Stelarc
then spends hours handing his body over to the internet. Fed up with what he
calls "the obsolete body."
Stelarc added an additional
robotic prosthetic arm to his already existing left arm, which is controlled
with his chest muscles. During each show, internet traffic reveals itself to
the audience as Stelarc’s entire body spasms. By the end of the performance
Stelarc is often incapable of walking. Stelarc explains, "The Ping Body
performance produces a powerful inversion of the usual interface of the body to
the net. Instead of collective bodies determining the operation of the
internet, the collective internet activity moves the body." Stelarc has
provided a channel for the internet to physically jerk and defeat us for all of
the circulation and abuse thrown at it every day. We create technology, and it
mutually challenges us.
The Helpless Robot, by Norman White, is robot
without a motor that responds to the behavior of humans by using only its
synthesized voice. The dialogue that is delivered depends on its present and
past experience of "emotions" ranging from boredom, frustration,
arrogance, and over stimulation. The Helpless Robot attempts to create a simulated
personality. Creating a simulated personality is impossible, because you can
never achieve anything that is as intricate as a living human being. Norman
took this on simply as an act of wonder. He started out asking himself “can a
machine which is fundamentally a product of the intellect also model emotions?
And how does one even begin to build a conceptual emotional framework? Are
there primary emotions, like primary colours, from which all other emotions
evolve?”
Its easy to see the parallel between these two artists. Both are successful with manipulating the human either mentally or physically. Stelarc, as a performance atrist, manipulates his body physically with the use of muscle stimulators. Norman White, with his helpless robot, manipulates a person into working to please the robot.
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