Mapping the Post modern : Newmedia - Neil Harbisson and Stelarc

Mapping the Post modern : Newmedia - Neil Harbisson and Stelarc

The New Media art forms have been understood as an art practice that utilises electronic technologies. This essay discusses the connections and exchanges between biological, electronic and digital forms that are the focus of cybernetics, cyborgs, transhumanism and posthumanism.

Neil Harbissons cybernetic implant eyeborg (figure 1), explores the extention and sensory substitution of human senses as well as issues of cyborg identity.

While Stelarc explores Katherine Hayle's issues of bodily boundaries, the obsolence of the body and the resulting identity issues through his performance Fractal Flesh (figure 2) .

Neil Harbisson's eyeborg, is a permanently implanted microchip and antenna protruding from the back of the artist head and arching over his face. The eyeborg is internally osseointergrated and protrudes from his occipital bone.The pricipal behind the eyeborg is that visible light wavelengths move quickly, and the chip in the eyeborg slows it down until is stops being visible and becomes audible (Akst 2012). This allows Harbisson, who has achromatopsia, to perceive not only the visible light frequencies but also normally invisible colors such as infrared and ultra violet.

The antenna itself is made up of four segments: two antenna stems, one vibration and sound implant, and a Bluetooth implant that enables internet connectivity. At present access to the eyeborg is limited to five people, one in each continent whom are permitted to send data in the form of images, sound and video. This internet connection also enables him to receive data from satellites and cameras in the form of colors and the capability to receive phone calls directly into the bone of his skull (Harbisson 2014).

Stelarcs Fractal Flesh was a 1995 performance for the “Telepolis” event, where participants in Paris (the Pompidou Centre), Amsterdam (for the Doors of Perception Conference) and Helsinki (The Media Lab) were invited to manipulate Stelarc's body which was located at the performance site in Luxembourg. This was achieved though electronically linking, via a website, the remote access and view control panels to a computer interfaced muscle-stimulation system (Luxembourg)(Stelarc 2015). Stelarc wore a heads-up display which allowed him to view the person who was manipulating him, as well as previous prosthetics art pieces, Third Hand and Involuntary body .

The remote access and view control panels enabled remote participants to activate the muscle-stimulation points on Stelarc's body producing movements that were involuntary, and view the results. Due to the technology of the time there was a one second delay between the participant input and Stelarc's physical response. Two desktop computers streamed images live to the internet which according to web statistics taken at the time indicated that the event was viewed in South East Asia, north America and Europe (Curtin University 2014) indicating interest in cyborg culture, transhumanism and post humanism.

Cyborg culture, as defined by technological philosopher Don Ihde, discusses the identification of humans as cyborg through two primary aspects of interaction between biological and technological forms, embodiment and hermeneutical. People often see a tool as a mere instrument to humanity, but with each technological advancement conversly changes humanity. The tool is no longer and object. When used, the tool is incorporated into the body and to the user identity. The second aspect is when the tool becomes a lens that the user then experiences the world through. In both cases the technology and the self become inceperable (Vicini, Andrea and Brazal Agnes 2015).

Additionally for Donna Haraway, the cyborg, is a hybrid creature, that can support transgressing the boundaries between male and female (Baraibar 1999).

While both artists use the technological intervention in eyeborg and Fractal Flesh in a way that it becomes an extention of their bodies. Harbisson's eyeborg best fits Don Ihde's second definition, firstly as it is permanently attached and by definition is apart of his body. But more But more importantly the eyeborg has revolutionized the way that Harbisson experiences life. As he perceives sound as colour. The telephone landline ringtone became green, Amy Winehouse’s Rehab song seemed red and pink. The eyeborg changed his canons of beauty and he now enjoyed listening to paintings. He enjoyed the clear notes produced by the paintings of Andy Warhol, Joan Miro and Mark Rothko but found that works by Da Vinci, Valazquez and Munch produced disturbing and brooding music reminicant of a horror movie scene (Viada 2010). Supermarkets and garbage dumps suddently began to sound like electronic music to Harbisson, as they are filled with bright colors, the latter more so due to bright lighting ( "Neil Harbisson:Eyeborg" 2014). His perception of faces and conventional beauty also changed , as he could hear the color of the eyes, hair and the lips making each face sound different; sometime beautiful people will sounds quite ugly and vica versa for Harbisson. For example Prince Charles sounded similar to Nicole Kidman.

In contrast Stelarcs Fractal Flesh performances uses prosthetics. The involuntary body and third arm components Fractal Flesh of are not intended to extend his senses, he uses technology as a tool, but the tool becomes apart of him and in turn his body becomes a tool to be manipulated. This nature of the prosthetics and muscle-stimulation used in Fractal Flesh converts Stelarc into an avatar. Which in turn allows the artist to become the hybrid creature described by Haraway, particularly when controlled remotely by a female agent. His body simply becomes hardware and pushing closer to the posthumanism ideals.

The concepts of posthumanism continually co-evolve with technological advancements and attempt to redefine social structures devoid of biological limitations. Where conciousness and communication can exist as disembodied entities (Wolfe 2009).

Ihab Hassan stated: “Humanism may be coming to an end as humanism transforms itself into something one must helplessly call posthumanism” ( Hassan 1977).

Transhumanists, Mathew Eppinette (Vicini, Andrea and Brazal Agnes 2015) writes, intend to transform the human body and human nature through the use of technology. The belief is that technology is inherently good, and will help humanity transition towards new humanism. Allowing humanity to transcend the limitiations of our biological forms and transitioning to a post-human civilization. Posthumanist belief is that the next stange of human evolution, which is the post human, is achieved through human technical ability and human will. But Katherine Hayles suggests that the boundaries of our embodied reality have been compromised by narrow definitions of humanness and to achieve posthumanism there must be a loss of subjectivity based on bodily boundaries.

For Stelarc his conceptual exploration through Fractal Flesh focuses on posthumanist ideals of disembodiment and transhumanism through remote conciousness. The obsolesence and inadeqecies of the human body, motivated Stelarc to construct the additional technological augmentations used in Fractal Flesh turning him vessel for the conciousness of a remote entity. (“Alternate Anatomical Architectures | Stelarc | TEDxVienna“ 2014). Stelarc states that the:

body is neither a very efficient nor very durable structure. It malfunctions often and fatigues quickly; its performance is determined by its age .... It might be the height of technological folly to consider the body obsolete inform and function, yet it might be the height of human realizations. For it is only when the body becomes aware of its present position that it can map its post evolutionary strategies (Baraibar 1999).

In fractal flesh the body is no longer bound and limited by its skin and is not limited to the local space that it occupies. The body is made up of multiple agents performing beyond its skin and beyond the local space that it inhabits (“Alternate Anatomical Architectures | Stelarc | TEDxVienna“ 2014). The body is now fractal flesh, bits of bodies which are electronically connected, generating reoccuring patterns of connectivity at varying scales. The remote agent is now transhuman as they manipulate Stelarcs body.

Neil Harbisson has been described by popular media due to the eyeborg as 'the worlds first cyborg' and 'post human'. Harbisson was born with achromatopsia, an extreme condition resulting in the artist being unable to perceive color. The solution for Harbisson then was the eyebord which is a sensory substitution device (SSD). Sensory substitution is the mapping of stimuli from one sensory organ and translating it for interpretation by another sensory organ. The aim is to bypass the defective sense and allowing the stimuli to be received by another functioning sense. The concept being that when an individual goes blind or deaf, they dont lose the ability to hear or see, they lose the ability to convey that stimuli to the brain (Gomes 2014 ).

Using this theory the eyeborg bypasses Neils color receptors by:

"... transposes color into a continuous electronic beep, exploiting the fact that both light and sound are made up of waves of various frequencies. Red, at the bottom of the visual spectrum and with the lowest frequency, sounds the lowest, and violet, at the top, sounds highest. A chip at the back of Harbisson’s head performs the necessary computations, and a pressure-pad allows color-related sound to be conducted to Harbisson’s inner ear through the vibration of his skull, leaving his outer ears free for normal noise. Harbisson, who has perfect pitch, has learned to link these notes back to the colors that produced them." (The World's First Posthuman? - Neil Harbisson and the "Eyeborg" 2014)

The eyeborg does not compensate for Harbissons lack of color perception. Instead he describes it as adding a new sense to his current vision and hearing, "which changes the way you perceive everything" ( Neil Harbisson:Eyeborg | The feed 2014).

Since 2003 Harbisson has continued to upgrade the capabilities of the eyeborg by adding infrared and ultraviolet which are beyond the human visible spectrum. Allowing him to perceive motion detectors, remote control devices and "hear if it is a good day or bad day to sunbath" (Neil Harbisson: I listen to color 2012). In 2014 the eyeborg was connected to a satelite, this for Harbisson was an important step as it allows our senses to travel to space before our bodies (Harbisson 2014).

For Harbisson:

“life will be much more interesting when we stop creating applications for mobile phones and start creating applications for our own body... this will be a big change that we see happening this century.. so think about which senses you would like to extend” ( Neil Harbisson: I listen to color 2012)

The idealised view of cyborg body apps, cyborg identity and social acceptance has been growing issues for Harbisson. The eyeborg has come to form his personal identity as a cyborg.

It's not the union between the eyeborg and my head what converts me into a cyborg but the union between the software and my brain, a union that has created a new sense in my brain that allows me to perceive colour as sound. I never take the eyeborg off: I wear it to sleep, and in the shower. It feels like a part of me. When I started to hear the sound of colour in my dreams, that’s when I began to think of myself as a cyborg (Viada 2010).

When asked, he assumed that over the course of 10 years that people would accept the eyeborg . Depending on the geographical location, he gets stopped very often, he gets banned from cinemas because they think that he is recording, he has issues at air ports and often gets laughted at "becuase they dont know what it is' (Harbisson 2014). Harbisson still believes that social interactions will change eventually towards him, in the meantime he has founded the Cyborg foundation, to fight for cyborg rights.

In 2004 Harbissons became the first cyborg recognised by the British government. Initially his British passport photo was rejected as the passport office does not allow electronic devices to be visible. Harbisson insisted that the eyeborg was part of his body as he had become a cyborg. With letters of support from doctors, friends and colleges he became the first officially recognized cyborg in Britain (Viada 2010).

Stelarc's Fractal Flesh also discusses issues with identity. Through the remote muscle-stimulation of his own body he raises issues with the authenticity of unique individuality, the individual is rather the multiplicity of the remote participants that it hosts. As a result the body becomes a chimera of metal, code and meat. The body can now project its physical presence through other bodies and machies. Fractal Flesh is the idea that spactially separated bodies and body parts are electronically connected. In Fractal Flesh, the body, currently know as Stelarc, has become an avatar for the multitude of manipulators (Stelarc 2012).

In Conclusion

Both Stelarc and Harbisson are engaging with New Media electronic technologies through, cybernetics, cyborg culture, transhumanism and posthumanism. They do this by adhereing to Don Ihde's definition of transhumanism by exploring the connection and exchange between biological, electronic and digital forms.

Stelarcs performance Fractal Flesh delves into the posthuman issue raised by Katherine Hayle in regards to bodily boundaries exposing the obsolesence of the body and raising questions regarding individual identity. Neil Harbissons eyeborg also explores sensory substitution and extending beyond the limitations of the human biological form which has redefined his identity as a cyborg and the way he perceives and experiences the world.

Figure 2. Stelarc Fractal flesh 1995, performance art.

Source: Medienkunstnetz 2015. Accessed 15 September. http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/fractal-flesh/

Figure 1. Neil Harbisson eyeborg 2014, cybernetic implant.

Source: The Guardian. Accessed 15 September. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/06/neil-harbisson-worlds-first-cyborg-artist

List of References

Akst, Jef. 2012. “The Sound of Color” The Scientist 26(5): 14-15. url:http://search.proquest.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/docview/1017540722?pq-origsite=summon.

Baraibar, Aitor. 1999. “Stelarc's post-evolutionary performance art: Exposing collisions between the body and technology” Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 11(1): 157-168. doi: 10.1080/07407709908571320.

Curtin University, Zombies, Cyborgs & Chimeras: A Talk by Performance Artist, Prof Stelarc (Youtube: Curtin University, 2014), video.

Gomes, Juan. 2014. “See ColOr: and extended sensory substitution device for the visually impared” Journal of Assistive Technologies 8(2): 77-94. doi :10.1108/JAT-08-2013-0025.

Harbisson, Neil. 2014. “The world's first cyborg”. By Al Jazeera. The Stream (video), 15 September. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s6RAqrgECM.

Hassan, Ihab. 1977. “Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Postmodern Culture?” The Georgia Review 31(4): 830 -850. url: http://www.jstor.org.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/stable/4139753.

Herox. 2014. The World's First Posthuman? - Neil Harbisson and the "Eyeborg" Accessed 15 September. https://herox.com/news/147-the-worlds-first-posthuman-neil-harbisson-and-the.

SBS2Australia, Neil Harbisson:Eyeborg | The feed (Youtube: SBS2Australia, 2014), video.

Stelarc. 2012. "Fractal Flesh  — Alternate Anatomical Architectures Interview with Stelarc”. By Marco Donnarumma. Econtact , 15 September. http://econtact.ca/14_2/donnarumma_stelarc.html.

Stelarc. 2015. “Fractal Flesh” Accessed 15 September. http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/projects/fractal/ffvid.html

TED, Neil Harbisson: I listen to color (Youtube: TED talks, 2012), video.

TEDx Talks, Alternate Anatomical Architectures | Stelarc | TEDxVienna (Youtube: TEDx Talks, 2014) video.

Viada, Mariana. 2010. Neil Harbisson A cyborg artist. Barcelona: Cyborg foundation.

Vicini, Andrea and Brazal Agnes. 2015. “Longing for Transcendence: Cyborgs and Trans- and Posthumans” Theological Studies 76(1): 148 – 165. doi: 10.1177/0040563914565308.

Wolfe, Cary. 2009. What is Posthumanism?. Minneapolis: Univeristy of Minnesota Press.