| Ping
Body Links Known for his motto, the "body is obsolete," the very physical and often gruesome performance artist, Stelarc, began to take his art and interactive technology to the next level in the early 90s. "Ping Body" consisted of a series of muscle stimulating electrodes placed on various parts of Stelarc's body that responded to remote users loggin on to the performance's web interface and stimulating various body parts on the graphic representation of stelarc's body. Ping values were gathered from the users' collective activity and caused areas of stelarcs body to be stimulated. Users also watched the resulting effects upon stelarc over a live webcast. Video and sound also played in the background behind Stelarc. TECH COMPONENTS: three computers, muscle stimulating electrodes and interface, three cameras, two video projectors, a vision switcher, a vision mixer, a specialised sound system and the Internet. detailed info Beyond the complex machinery and coding developed to generate this landmark new-media net-art event, I find that Ping Body's social commentary against the early proliferation of wide-spread internet use is particurlary interesting. In a sense, it played upon the new 'internet-isolation' fear--the fear that we were becoming physically removed from our world in this new cyber-oriented and alienating internet culture--materializing (to an extreme) the individual and body as the passive puppet to a collective and surreal network. However, the almost eerily satiric image of the naked Stelarc girating and flexing his limbs involuntarily produced a tone that also turned the fear inside out, questioning its validity: would we or could we truly permit ourselves to become forever lost to a catatonic /mouse-clicking/ mental-submersion in information flow? This is my own response to the work. Thinking in terms of Stelarc, "the body is obsolete," I'm sure his ultimate answer would be that losing the body to technology is not something to be feared, but welcomed, submitting the flesh to the machine is an enhancement, a means of prolonging and advancing an original form whose efficiency and scope falls short of its mechanical counterparts.. Submitted
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