Ear On Arm
Stelarc, Ear on Arm
Stelarc, the Australian performance artist, has been using the human body as his medium in an ongoing way, moving from internalized art, to external prosthetics, and finally to new organs and body transmogrifications. Ear on Arm is an example of a new technological body–a transhuman. A ten-year work in progress, Ear on Arm has involved the cultivation of a prosthetic ear out of cartilage and cells, a twelve-year quest to secure financing and to find a surgeon willing to sew it on, several surgeries, and the insertion of a microphone and blue-tooth transmitter that would wirelessly broadcast to the Internet the sounds of Stelarc and his environment. Though in the making of this project Stelarc has suffered necrosis of the flesh, and an infection that forced him to remove the microphone, he continues to push this project forward. And it makes for an incredible photo-op. At an event at London’s Work Gallery in connection with an exhibition associated with the publication of my book See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception, everyone wanted to get a picture with Stelarc and his third ear.
Madeline Schwartzman
Author of: See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception
www.madelineschwartzman.com
