Stan Wijnans

To have technological attachments [to the body] is not just to repair or replace the body but rather to augment it in alternate sort of ways. And, again, it is not an issue of social engineering or an utopian blueprint for a better body. I think that kind of discourse is fraught with philosophical political and social problems. It is curious when part of your body is not under your control ; I am not trying to say that it is a better condition to be in, but rather that it is a condition that has not been experienced in this way before. You are experiencing control movement. Not within a medical pathology but through being complicit with these robotic interfaces (Stelarc in Hall, Zylinska 2003:6).

Stelarc, Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit within the Nottingham Trent University School of Art and Design (NTSAD), has previously worked with prosthetics, robotics, virtuality systems and the internet as mediums of artistic expression and as we can read below, explores alternate interfaces that extend the body’s capabilities. ‘Technology demonstrates the biological imperfection of the body’, Stelarc says. ‘We can’t merely design technology for the body because that technology begins to usurp and outperform the body. Perhaps it’s now time to design the body to match its machines’ (Geary 2002:101).