[spectre] EAF Info: STELARC

[EAF Director]

STELARC
1 JUNE - 30 JUNE 2007

OPENING THURSDAY 6PM 31 MAY

ARTIST'S TALK 4PM FRIDAY 1st JUNE [Seating is limited, please book]
EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION
ADELAIDE SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Stelarc is an iconic international Australian artist who has 
performed extensively in Japan, Europe and the USA. He has used 
medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, virtual reality systems 
and the Internet to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary 
interfaces with the body. Internet connectivity performances such as 
Ping Body and Parasite have probed notions of telematic scaling and 
the engineering of external, extended and virtual nervous systems for 
the body. Of his 2003 Prosthetic Head Stelarc wrote, "The aim was to 
construct an automated, animated, reasonably informed and somewhat 
intelligent artificial head that speaks to the person who 
interrogates it. As a conversational system it requires a human user. 
The head is only as intelligent as the person who interrogates it. As 
the data-base increases it will become more informed and less 
predictable in its responses. The artist will no longer take 
responsibility for what his head says."
The Experimental Art Foundation is delighted to be able to present a 
selection of Stelarc's most recent works including Blender and Extra 
Ear: Ear on Arm.
Blender is a collaborative installation produced by Stelarc and Nina 
Sellars. Both artists undertook liposuction operations specifically 
for the purpose of this new work. The bio-materials are now housed 
within Blender's industrial casing. Blender acts as an astute 
signpost toward some of the more contentious issues surrounding the 
blending of contemporary technology with corporeality.
Extra Ear: Ear on Arm is a surgically constructed left ear inserted 
into the artist's left arm. When the lengthy procedure is completed 
the ear, along with a transmitter inside Stelarc's mouth will form a 
headset that is able to receive and transmit bluetooth signals.
Other works to be exhibited include Walking Head Robot, Prosthetic 
Head, and Alternate Interfaces, an edited compilation documenting 
other projects.
"Stelarc's ... pronouncements on the obsolescence of the body and the 
need for its augmentation, with all the connotations of 
techno-economic progress and social evolution they entail, can best 
be heard and interpreted as provocations that are testing the limits 
of the techno-deterministic discourse, a discourse in which 
technology is positioned as determining the way the world develops. 
They reveal the possibility, or even inevitability, of the 
unpredictable, the accidental and the unknown in any developmental 
trajectory." Joanna Zylinksa, "The Extra Ear of the Other: On 
Being-In-Difference," Stelarc catalogue essay, EAF, Adelaide. 
May-June 2007.

Stelarc is Chair in Performance Art at Brunel University West London. 
He is also Senior Research Fellow at the MARCS Lab at the University 
of Western Sydney. In 1997 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Art 
and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. In 2002 he 
was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Monash University, Melbourne. In 
2005/2006 he was a recipient of a New Media Arts Fellowship from the 
Australia Council. His art is represented by the Sherman Galleries in 
Sydney. Artist's website: 
<http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/>www.stelarc.va.com.au

For further enquiries and to make bookings for Stelarc's talk contact
EAF Program Manager: Design & Publicity, Teri Hoskin at:
<mailto:info at eaf.asn.au>info at eaf.asn.au or phone 08 82117505


EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION
LION ARTS CENTRE, NORTH TERRACE [WEST END] ADELAIDE SOUTH AUSTRALIA
11-5 TUES-FRI; 2-5 SATURDAY | +61 8 8211 7505 | 
<mailto:eaf at eaf.asn.au>eaf at eaf.asn.au | 
<http://www.eaf.asn.au>www.eaf.asn.au
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The EAF is assisted by the Australian Government through the 
Australia Council for the arts, its arts funding and advisory body, 
and by the South Australian Government through Arts SA. The EAF is 
also supported through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an 
initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.
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Director: Melentie Pandilovski

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