Artist Research Task: Stelarc :/

Stelarc

Stelarc is a Cyprus born, Melborne raised Performance artist whos work primarily focuses around the concept that the human body is obsolete and extending the range of capabilities that the human body can achieve. His art very much has a shock factor to it, which isn't a bad thing, I think art should jolt the audience to a degree but not his level. I'm gonna be honest, I don't like this stuff. For me his work actually is very disturbing to me and its not something I enjoy in the slightest, body modification in this sense makes me skin crawl and not in a "ooo this is weird but i wanna see more" way, I just wish I'd never seen it and could live the rest of my life in peace. 

Lets start with some family friendly work,
He did a project called Prosthetic Head, where he had a 3D modeled and animated head of himself created which you could talk to and have simple convocations with, it had a range of expressions and due to its algorithms it was intelligent as whoever was talking to it, simmilar to this online 'bots' you can talk too. I like this piece because it was a nice break from the daily horror of his other work.

Prosthetic Head - Stelarc

One of the few pieces of work I found that was less disturbing but more disgusting was a collaborative piece that he did with Nina Sellars. She is an artist who combines drawing, photography, sculpture and new media and explores aspects of the physiology of the human body. They both had Liposuction and then kept it and put in it a big blender. I think the pieces comment on the issues of the 'blending' of newer technology and the human body is a fair, I does have a stance on that matter and it does draw light to it, but man is it gross. 

Blender - Stelarc, Nina Sellars

Blender - Stelarc, Nina Sellars

Other then that his work consists of a lot of ears, and a lot of suspension of the human body via giant hooks put into the skin. 'm not putting the suspension pics on my blog bc I didn't wanna see them, If you want too then Here you go.

Ear On Arm - Stelarc

Ear on Arm is probably the piece of work that Stelarc is most famous for has it was a news story across the globe. From what I could read he did this because he was fascinated with surgically altering his body permanently and he wanted to create something that would take something and repurpose it so he took an ear (a fake one created for this) and then put it in his arm and he hopes that in the future he wants to give it internet connectivity so it can broadcast his daily life.I think this concept is interesting but I would very much rather do this in any other way, like having a sculpture of an ear in his living room or as a backpack that can stream his life.

In general, I don't like his work, This level of body modification just makes my skin crawl. It makes me uncomfortable and I 'd rather not study his art again, I tried to create a post that covered all kinds of his work and commented on them from different viewpoints but has it been a struggle. I think his style just doesn't match up with my own aesthetic tastes and in my work around the body I like to celebrate the human body and how it looks, I think the body is fab just how it it so the fact that his work focuses on extreme body modification it just doesn't work for me.

Summer Project

The brief for the summer project was to plan an installation project around a politically aware theme. I was slightly stumped with this task as political art is not normally an area of art I delve into, I recognise its importance but in general it rarely interests me. It took me a while before I could think of a starting point and from research I stumbled upon an activist Instagram user;

Glacier Girl uses social media and trending themes of visually pleasing aesthetic photography to raise environmental awareness. I really like this approach of advertisement as it reaches the demographic that has the time, energy, and potential resources to actually create change. Her choice to create eye pleasing images is also something I recognise with as I like to create visually interesting images to portray whatever I'm trying to convey. The environmental stance her images has prompted me to run along side this theme too as I've decided to base my project around saving the bees. 

Step 1: Bees

I was unable to find may bee themed art pieces and projects out there but I did find one by louis Masai. It was a graffiti style installation based in the streets of London. He said he wanted to create something that brought an issue that occurs in countryside areas of the country to more urban environments, to show how the issue of colony collapse disorder may not be happening near where people live but is still affecting them. 

Save The Bees - Louis Masai

Save The Bees - Louis Masai

Save The Bees - Louis Masai

Even though I'm passionate about this subject I'm still very uninspired in regards to how i want the images to look or even be displayed, most of what I've found online has been small draw pieces that have been posted to tumblr or other social media but no installations or projects. I also have no idea if I could think of a way to use Glacier Girls style of art with the bee theme. 

Step 2: Plastic Bags

So, I kind of had an epiphany about plastic bags, and how I could do this project on them. I'm still going to use inspiration from Glacier Girl and aspects from Louis Masai's work. My main idea was around how the images will look. I want them to be minimalist bust shots of subjects, little to no makeup, simple sleek hair and then to have them being "consumed" by plastic (bags, for example) and/or be entrapped by it, like when sea creatures get trapped in beer rings. 

Excuse my bad drawing

From this I the project has a slight ocean theme as plastic most obviously effects the ocean then other habitats. Because of the animal underlining of this subject I briefly considered having animal subjects but, most protest pieces of this subject are of animals so on one had I want to create something different from what the public have seen already and also I feel by using human subjects it brings the issue closer to home. the aesthetic of the images is very much inspired from Glacier Girl, with clean imagery, simple clean skin and contrasting/highlighted subject matter. 

Save the Maldives - glacier996girl

glacier996girl

#globalisation - glacier996girl

As for presentation of this collection my initial thoughts were in a gallery but it wouldn't work as not everyone would see it and I want it to be something found everywhere. I feel the project could be found on billboards but idk if it'll have the impact I need. 

I then thought of how cigarette packets and tabaco pouches have the health warnings on the pouches themselves, images of the worst that could happen through smoking. So from that I thought that I should have the images on bio-degradable plastic bags. I think I'd have them be a free alternative to the 5p bags you get so the public will be more inclined to go for them as an option to get the art to the public quicker. I feel this project could be done relatively easily the only tough areas would be making the bags and getting them distributed.