Performance artist Stelarc FAHA is rethinking & reimagining what it means to be human

Propel by Stelarc, photographed by Steven AlyianExtended Arm by Stelarc, photographed by Dean Winter

For over fifty years, Stelarc FAHA’s work has challenged and extended upon our understanding of what it means to be human, and how we understand our bodies by integrating technology, prosthetics and implants to augment and extend the human body.

Stelarc has performed and exhibited in Japan, Korea, China, Europe and the USA. His major work includes his 1973-1976 project mapping his internal landscape, which filmed 3 metres of his stomach, lungs and colon. In 1995, for Fractal Flesh at “Telepolis”, Stelarc’s body was remotely choreographed using muscle stimulation. People in the Pompidou in Paris, the Media Lab in Helsinki and the Doors of Perception in Amsterdam were able to access his body remotely and interact with it.

In 1996 he was made an Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University. In 2010 he was awarded the Ars Electronica Golden Nica Hybrid Arts Prize. In 2015 he received the Australia Council’s Emerging and Experimental Arts Award. In 2016 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Ionian University, Corfu. In 1996, he was made an Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University and has received two honorary doctorates from Monash University and the Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow. He was elected to the Academy of the Humanities as an Honorary Fellow in 2024.

What inspired you to pursue your particular field?

The trivial but revealing answer is that I began doing performance when I discovered I was a bad painter in art school! But more seriously, I was always interested in Darwinian evolution, and with Lamarckian theory. Especially with the human body and how it operates, interacts and becomes aware in the world. Also, I was intrigued with Comparative Anatomies, curious about alternative evolutionary architectures — how insects and animals for example, sense and interact in the world so differently than us, in their own umwelts, and consequently how our human philosophy is determined by our physiology.

In my earlier physically difficult actions and sensory deprivation experiments the inadequacies of the body were exposed. With the endoscopic probing and filming of my body (three metres of internal space), for the first time I subjectively experienced the body not as a surface of skin but rather a complex internal architecture of spaces, structures and circulatory systems. Simultaneously there was a realisation of the obsolescence of the biological body now inhabiting a technological terrain of fast and precise machines and computational systems. There was a desire to augment and extend the body to better interface and function with technology.

In fact, we have always been prosthetic bodies augmented by our artifacts, instruments, machines and computational systems. The body, of necessity, has always been in excess of its biology.

Can you tell us about your current project / artistic practice? How do you approach a new project?

The most recent performance was titled Sonic Resonance, performed as part of the 2024 UNESCO Creative Cities of Media Art Forum at GMap (Gwangju Media Art Platform) in Korea. It was a 40 minute performance with an aesthetic surveillance system of 4 cameras – a small wrist camera, a camera positioned above the body, a camera looking up at the robot arm and a camera attached to the end of the robot arm that generated dynamic video feedback. The sensor bracelets modulated the sound. The interactive video switching system allowed the artist to choreograph the images whilst composing the bio-signals and bracelet sounds. Projection was possible on all four walls which made the performance fully immersive visually as well as acoustically. At times the synchronicity of body movements, robot programming, projected images and the sound generated was seductive.

The Third Hand, when it was completed was sophisticated enough to get invitations from the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena and the Johnson Space Centre in Houston to demonstrate its EMG control to the Extra Vehicular Activity Group. The Third Hand was limited to a human hand’s functions. But at present I am working on an ambidextrous arm project at the ISIR Lab at the Sorbonne in Paris. Although human-like in appearance its fingers and elbow are double-jointed. It can be a left hand or a right hand all-in-on, with continuous wrist rotation. It will have 4 modes of control. An autonomous AI mode, an arm exoskeleton actuation, a bio-signal ECG and EMG sync mode and also with remote online interactivity. People in other places will be able to participate in a performance. The arm will be magnetically coupled to my body. This will be a large arm for performance. It is not meant as a novel prosthesis for amputees. Having said that if an amputee needed to replace a right hand, why not replace it with an ambidextrous hand. Perhaps two left hands might better complete certain tasks. As a performance artist, ideas are easy. What is difficult is to actualise these ideas, to perform with and physically experience them. To evaluate and hopefully meaningfully articulate these alternative possibilities.

Reclining StickMan by Stelarc, photographed by Saul Steed.

How does your work address the challenges we’re facing as a society?

Firstly, it should be understood that Art, Poetry, Music, Literature and Philosophy can be an expression of the zeitgeist, they can expose and celebrate the human condition, they can reflect and consolidate cultural identity, and they can challenge current the social and political positions.

But Art is not about solving immediate problems or finding utilitarian solutions. Rather it is about enhancing our sensibilities, amplifying our imaginations, generating creative possibilities and inspiring us to appreciate the other.

And experiencing intuition and affect and an appreciation of the unexpected and the accidental. Hopefully my projects, performances and ideas contribute to rethinking and reimagining the human condition in its increasing hybridity with our machines, instruments and computational systems. Technology is not the alien other. Rather our artifacts have been a determining feature of the trajectory of human civilization. Now we need to increasingly and seamlessly slide between offline and online worlds. To function between the actual and the virtual. And to rethink and reimagine notions of embodiment, identity and agency in an age of Fractal Flesh – of bodies and bits of bodies, spatially separated but electronically connected, generating recurring patterns of human activity at varying scales. Our sense of self is extruded, no longer bounded by skin and grounded in a particular location but is extended and distributed globally over the internet. We are increasingly functioning as distributed bodies.

Why are the humanities important?

Well, the human is an unstable social and historical construct.

The Humanities are important in not merely interrogating but also providing critical perspectives in comprehending what has preceded us, what is occurring at present and alerting to and reimagining possible futures.

Art, Poetry, Music, Literature and Philosophy are necessary human pursuits. And as curious creatures, not simply affirming the social and political status quo but rethinking and reimagining what else might be possible. Existing as social creatures means to understand social values, to have empathy and ethical concerns about human activities – scientific and otherwise.  The Sciences make the world more predictive through reductive examination, the Humanities provide necessary interpretations and understanding of these new discoveries. Critically interrogating, evaluating and creating alternative positions becomes essential.

Our futures are not inevitable. They need not happen of necessity. Contingency need to be factored in any possible future. A future is not a future if it is not of the unexpected. Futures are constructed through unexpected couplings of cultural and social changes as well as new technologies and sci-fi imaginings.

We are constantly rethinking and reimagining what it means to be human at a time when we are now navigating from cosmological deep time to physical nanoscales to virtual non-places. The body now inhabits abstract realms of the highly hypothetical and of streaming subjectivity. Our social media machines create artificial memories we are prompted to artificially experience. We perform as biological bodies offline and phantom bodies online. In fact, there is an increasing and seamless operation from offline to online operation. The increasing speed of oscillation blurs any meaningful distinction between the actual and the virtual. The body has become a contemporary chimera of biology, technology and algorithmic code. What it means to be human is perhaps not to remain human at all.

What excites you in your field right now? What worries you?

Ear On Arm by Stelarc, photographed by Nina Sellars

What excites us also is what might concern us. There are two main trajectories in the relationships of bodies and machines. On the one hand there is the Augmented Humans research in universities and on the other the engineering of Humanoid Robots.

Bodies are becoming more prosthetically automated with attachments and implants whilst machines are becoming more human-like in their more subtle motion and dexterity.

Bodies are becoming increasingly actuated and animated by their machines and by their algorithms. Humanoid robots are becoming increasingly seductive with their real-time lip syncing, speech synthesis and emotive facial expressions. One might conjecture that at a certain point in time these trajectories of Augmented Humans and Humanoid Robots reach a meeting point where it might be meaningless to distinguish between the two. I am neither utopian nor dystopian in my views. In the immediate future we will be increasingly socially interacting with not only human-like robots but also insect and animal robots. Initially performing utilitarian functions and even acting as companions. Computationally these robots will increasingly become intelligent and autonomous systems. What also excites and concerns is the nano-scaling of technology. We presently do not have adequate early alert warning systems of pathologies occurring at a cellular level. By the time you feel the lump in your chest it is too late, the cancer has metastasized. Nano sensors could detect the first signs of a pathology, making it easier to target and eradicate. So, what might happen is that the human body will be increasingly populated by nano sensors and nanobots, augmenting our bacterial and viral population. And bio-medically, with CrisR technology, it will be easier now to genetically intervene and alter our DNA, initially to correct genetic faults but increasingly to better design bodies. The outcomes and ethical issues of these possible developments will need to be critically addressed.

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