[Synapse elist] Exoskeletons...

Tue May 20 21:47:24 CST 2008

Hi Brad,

In elaborating on your queries-

"I’m curious how Stelarc personally understands the relationships that
he has with his body extensions? I remember Howard Cargill’s
observation of a Stelarc performance where he talked about the
antagonistic and opposing relationship between a technological
prosthesis and the body, and yet, he noted that these dualities still
advanced “towards an awkward Harmony”.  I wonder if Stelarc has ever
felt ‘natural’ in his experiments with an augmented body? (Especially
the six legged Exoskeleton for it appears to me that has real
potential in the future for the mobility impaired to go four wheel
driving/ six leg walking)."

Legged locomotion would certainly be advantageous in off-the-road,  
rough terrain. Walking machines are becoming more flexible, versatile  
and have more stable and dynamically balanced gaits. Where bipedal  
locomotion itself might not be adequate in certain environments a body  
with insect-like or animal-like locomotion might actually perform  
better- constructing a useful chimera.

Some interesting walking and jumping robots-

http://youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x8y48BBUAw

Anyway, insect or animal-like exoskeletons that significantly extend  
operation or disturbingly alter appearance would cause problems of  
functioning in social spaces. Our architectural spaces are made for  
bipedal humans so any multi-legged locomotion systems would be clumsy  
in confined spaces but also would, most likely, be scary in their  
speed and strangeness.

Machine driven wheels or machine actuated legs operate with weight,  
friction and structural stress. Perhaps machines that hover and glide  
might be more effective and efficient ways of moving bodies smoothly  
and more quietly...

I have never thought of the Third Hand, the Extended Arm or the  
Exoskeleton walking robot in utilitarian terms or as being enabling as  
such. It has been more about exploring alternate anatomical  
architectures. And what it means to experience these intimate and  
often involuntary interfaces with technology. What's interesting  
artistically is messing with these systems, seeing what is possible.  
What surprising outcomes might eventuate. What slippage there may be  
between intention and what actually happens.

I guess I've avoided seeing all this in terms of what is natural or  
not. We're never simply born a biological body. We are born into a  
historical moment with certain social constraints and cultural  
conditionings. With varying physical appearances and varying physical  
capabilities- and yes sometimes with what might be physical  
impairments. In any case, at any other moment, we may suffer an injury  
that results in some kind of augmentation being necessary. But that  
augmentation need not be what allows us to perform within the norm but  
will possibly allow us to operate in alternate and extended ways.

Perhaps it's not useful to think in dualities anymore, of seeing the  
body and its technologies as "antagonistic and opposing relationships"  
as Howard suggests. As the prosthetic augmentation in these projects  
and performances has always been in the realm of contingency (not of  
necessity) and thus in the realm of excess, there has been willing  
complicity in the relationship of the body and its machines.  I have  
not seen prosthetic augmentation merely as mechanical or electronic  
hardware. The Virtual Arm (a manipulator for a virtual task  
environment) and the Prosthetic Head (an embodied conversational agent  
that speaks to the person who interrogates it) allow you to function  
with virtual entities in mixed realities. And the Extra Ear is a  
project about a soft prosthesis- about surgically constructing and  
stem cell engineering a publicly accessible organ for people in other  
places. We have evolved soft internal organs to better function in the  
world, now we can engineer external additional organs, internet  
enabled, to better function in the technological terrain that we now  
inhabit.

One of the better articles on my performances, in reference to the  
prosthetic and the chimera in Kant was written by Howard Caygill. See-

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_n1_v56/ai_19827691/pg_1

The other issue Brad touched upon is the seduction of symbiosis. It  
would be  meaningful to try to articulate this experience without  
resorting to metaphysical assumptions of self and subjectivity or what  
is done consciously or sub-consciously by the body. Certainly it is  
about intimate and effective interface between the body and the  
technology. Attaining a complexity and immediacy of feedback loops  
between the body and its machine so that they can perform in  
synchronicity, effortlessly and seamlessly-  then there is no longer  
an issue  of who or what is in control.
To conclude,  HAL, a Japanese exoskeleton for human augmentation-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSP46lWvxJ4&feature=related

And there are a number of similar ones with more overt military use  
(impressive non-the-less) such as the Berkeley Bionics Human  
Exoskeleton-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdK2y3lphmE

It's not easy to avoid medical-military discourses when considering  
human augmentation.

Also in speaking of what is natural, I do like Marshall McLuhan's idea  
that technology is the external organs of the body. That electronic  
circuitry externalizes our nervous system...

Stelarc

Performance Artist

Chair in Performance Art
School of Arts
Brunel University West London

Senior Research Fellow & Artist in Residence
MARCS Laboratories
University of Western Sydney

www.stelarc.va.com.au
Mobile: +61-408-437-517

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