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is a Cyprus born, Melborne raised Performance artist whos work primarily focuses around the concept that the human body is obsolete and extending the range of capabilities that the human body can achieve.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.