The Cyborg Experiments TECHNOLOGIES: STUDIES IN CULTURE & THEORY Editors: Gary Hall, Middlesex University, and Chris Hables Gray, University of Great Falls CONSULTANT EDITORS Parveen Adams, Keith Ansell-Pearson, Jim Falk, Steve Graham, Donna Haraway, Deborah Heath, Manuel DeLanda, Paul Patton, Constance Penley, Kevin Robins, A vital Ronell, Andrew Ross, Allucquere Rosanne Stone Technologies is a series dedicated to publishing innovative and provoc- ative work on both 'new' and 'established' technologies: their history, contemporary issues and future frontiers. Bringing together theorists and practitioners in cultural studies, critical theory and Continental philosophy, the series will explore areas as diverse as cyberspace, the city, cybernetics, nanotechnology, the cosmos, AI, prosthetics, genetics and other medical advances, as well as specific technologies such as the gun, telephone, Internet and digital TV. BOOKS IN THE SERIES The Architecture of the Visible: Technology and Graham MacPhee Urban Visual Culture The Cyborg Experiments: The Extensions of the Joanna Zylinska (ed.) Body in the Media Age Transductions: Bodies and Machines at Speed Adrian Mackenzie THE CYBORG EXPERIMENTS The Extensions of the Body in the Media Age edited by JOANNA ZYLINSKA continuum LONDON NEW YORK CONTINUUM The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6503 First published 2002 © Joanna Zylinska and the contributors 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche, mechanical recording, photocopying, translation, or any other means, known or as yet unknown, or stored in an information retrieval system, without written permission obtained beforehand from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-8264-5902-1 (hardback) ISBN 0-8264-5903-X (paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The cyborg experiments: the extensions of the body in the media age / edited by Joanna Zylinska. p. cm. - (Technologies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8264-5902-1 - ISBN 0-8264-5903-X (pbk.) 1. Human-machine systems. 2. Cyborgs. 3. Robotics—Social aspects. I. Zylinska, Joanna, 1971- . II. Technologies (London, England) TA167 .C93 2002 303.48'3-dc21 Typeset by CentraServe Ltd, Saffron Walden, Essex Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall Contents Notes on Contributors vii Acknowledgements xi Extendingo McLuhan into the New Media Ageo : An Introduction 1 Joanna Zylinska PART 1: THE CYBORG LINKS Chapter 1. High-Tech Frankenstein, or Heidegger Meets Stelarc 15 Mark Poster Chapter 2. The Human/Not Human in the Work of Orlan and Stelarc 33 Julie Clarke Chapter 3. Stelarc and Orlan in the Middle Ages 56 Meredith Jones and Zoe Sofia Chapter 4. Towards a Compliant Coupling: Pneumatic Projects, 1998-2001 73 Stelarc PART 2: THE OBSOLETE BODY? Chapter 5. What Does an Avatar Want? Stelarc's E-motions 81 Edward Scheer Chapter 6. Planned Obsolescence: Flying into the Future with Stelarc 101 John Appleby v CONTENTS Chapter 7. Probings: An Interview with Stelarc 114 Joanna Zylinska and Gary Hall ChapterS. Para-Site 131 Gary Hall PART 3: SELF-HYBRIDATION Chapter 9. Morlan 149 Fred Rotting and Scott Wilson Chapter 10. The Virtual and/or the Real 168 Orlan Chapter 11. Anger, Art and Medicine: Working with Orlan 172 Rachel Armstrong PART 4: AESTHETICS AND ETHICS: TECHNOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Chapter 12. In Defence of Prefigurative Art: The Aesthetics and Ethics of Orlan and Stelarc 181 Chris Hables Gray Chapter 13. Ph/autography and the Art of Life: Gillian Wearing'o s Ethical Realism 193 Jay Prosser Chapter 14. 'The Future ... Is Monstrous': Prosthetics as Ethics 214 Joanna Zylinska Name Index 237 VI Notes on Contributors John Appleby is a doctoral student in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, UK, pursuing research into methodolo- gies of anti-humanist contagion, and consequent materialist expla- nations of new technology. Rachel Armstrong is a writer and former medical doctor. She works as a collaborator with artists on projects that are a hybrid between art and science. She is a part-time lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London, and has edited two publications: Sci-Fi Aesthetics (1998) and Space Architecture (2000). Her fiction novel The Gray's Anatomy was published by Serpents Tail in 2001. Fred Dotting is Professor of English Literature at Keele University, UK. He has co-edited (with Scott Wilson) The Bataille Reader and The Bataille Critical Reader for Blackwell and has published (also with Scott Wilson) two books: Bataille (Palgrave, 2000) and The Tarantinian Ethics (Sage, 2001). Julie Clarke is a digital artist and writer who completed her undergraduate studies at RMIT, Melbourne, Australia. She completed her Honours year at the University of Melbourne, being awarded a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Arts (Art History). She gained her Master's Degree in Fine Arts, Art History by research thesis in 1997 at the University of Melbourne, where she is currently a candidate for a Ph.D. Her poetic pros e and articles have been published in Australia, the United Kingdom and Norway (in translation). She co-won the inaugurao l Fauldinog Award for writingo for multimedia at the Adelaide Festival of the Arts in 1998, later exhibited at 'Lovebit', Staffordshire. Chris Hables Gray, Ph.D., is an associate professor of the Cultural vii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Studies of Science and of Computer Science at the University of Great Falls in Montana. He is also part-time core faculty in the Graduate College of the Union Institute and University. He is the author of Cyborg Citizen (Routledge, 2001) and of Postmodern War (Guilford/ Routledge, 1997), and editor of The Cyborg Handbook (Routledge, 1995). Currently he is working with others on a collection about contemporary anarchism and with another collective on a radio play about an Irish demi-god. Alone, he is writing a book about infor- mation technology and peacemaking and another about human— machine integration in space exploration (NASA and the Cyborg, Athlone/Continuum, forthcoming). Gary Hall is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Middlesex University, London. As well as general co-editor of the Technologies series, he is also founding co-editor of the electronic journal Culture Machine <http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk>. His work has appeared in numerous books and journals, including parallax, Surfaces, Angelaki and The Oxford Literary Review. He has just completed a book on cultural studies, deconstruction and new technology entitled Culture in Bits for Athlone/Continuum. Meredith Jones is a doctoral candidate at the University of Western Sydney, where she is writing a dissertation about cosmetic surgery, anti-ageing technologies, cyberspace and notions of immortality. She teaches media studies at Sydney's University of Technology. Orlan is a French multimedia and performance artist who lives and works in Paris. Her projects have involved poetry, drama, painting, photography and, famously, installations with trousseau fabric stained with sexual fluids which were intended to challenge the splitting of the female image into the 'madonna and whore' dichotomy. In the 1990s Orlan embarked on a sequence of surgical operations — performances by means of which she self-mockingly modelled herself on selected mythological figures. The operating theatre became the artist's studio in which Orlan literally 'gave her body to art'. The surgeries were precisely staged and recorded in order to be shown in art galleries and other public spaces all over the world. Orlan's most recent project, viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Refiguration/Self-Hybridation, involves the production of digital photo- images and interactive video installations dealing with body transfor- mations in Maya and Olmec cultures. Orlan's Web site: <www.orlan.net>. Mark Poster is Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of California, Irvine, and a member of the History Depart- ment. He has a courtesy appointment in the Department of Infor- mation and Computer Science. He is a member of the Critical Theory Institute. His recent books are What's the Matter with the Internet: A Critical Theory of Cyberspace (University of Minnesota Press, 2001), The Information Subject in Critical Voices Series (Gordon & Breach Arts International, 2001), Cultural History and Postmodernity (Columbia Uni- versity Press, 1997), The Second Media Age (Polity and Blackwell, 1995) and The Mode of Information (Blackwell and the University of Chicago Press, 1990). Jay Prosser is Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality (Columbia University Press, 1998). He is currently completing a book on photography and autobiography. Edward Scheer lectures in performance studies in the School of Theatre, Film and Dance at the University of New South Wales and is a freelance arts writer. He is the editor of 100 Years of Cruelty: Essays on Artaud (Sydney: Power Publications and Artspace, 2000) and Antonin Artaud: A Critical Reader (Rouledge, forthcoming), and is secretary of the board of directors of The Performance Space in Sydney. Zoe Sofia (a.k.a. as Zoe Sofoulis) lectures in humanities at the University of Western Sydney and writes on the irrational and corporeal dimensions of our relations