Saturday, October 20, 2007

This is INCREDIBLE!

Okay, so following up on Stelarc, the australian performance artist. He had proposed his ear on the arm project 10 years ago, but the project was only just realized last week. It took him 10 years to find a surgeon who was willing to do it. Several surgeries were required to completely graft the ear onto the arm, but it's phenomenal, frightening, exciting, mental, visceral, and more . He now plans to implant a tiny microphone that contains a bluetooth transmitter which would allow any one else in the room to hear what his arm ear is hearing.

But watch this news coverage. It's disturbing to watch how baffled, uncomfortable, and dismissive is the newscaster and his guest. It reminds me of the Vito Acconci video we watched with him trying to open the woman's eyes. They refuse to understand or acknowledge any brilliance here, instead seeing only irrationality. IMO, Stelarc is visionary...he boldly demonstrates an incredible possibility, and shows us an actual example. (and the surgeon deserves some credit for being the first to see the vision through with him).


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, good find. That's very cool that it got national coverage, although the freakshow way it was covered is unfortunate. I wonder if he'll push this ever farther, I hope so.

Tyler said...

Amazing to see that he actually did this, and most of all that he will make it functional!

"the trouble with this is that he wasn't born this way"

These people clear do not understand what he was doing.