Stelarc: Split Body: Voltage In / Voltage Out

Stelarc: Split Body: Voltage In / Voltage Out

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Title Split Body: Voltage In / Voltage Out
Type Media art, Performance, Programmed / software art, Robotic art, Computer art, Body-art / Live-art, New-media performance
Date 12 June 1996
Venue Kapelica Gallery
City of production Ljubljana, Slovenia
Production Kapelica Gallery
Format 720x576 pxl
Duration 01' 29"
URL http://www.kapelica.org/index_si.html#event=382
Registration number KAP-1996-PERF-193

Synopsis

A system has been developed for the actuation of a body. A touch - screen interface to a multiple muscle stimulator allows the body's movements to be programmed by touching the muscle - sites on the computer model. Orange flesh maps the possible sites, red flesh indicates the actuated muscle(s). The sequence of motions can be replayed continuously with its loop function. As well as choreography by pressing, it is possible to paste sequences together from a library of gesture icons. The improvise function allows random motions to be superimposed. The system allows stimulation of the programmed movement for analysis and evaluation before transmission to actuate the body. At a lower stimulation level, it is a body prompting system; at a higher stimulation level, it becomes a body actuation system. With the third hand attached, the stimbod software results in a split body: with voltage - in on the LHS choreographing limb movements and voltage - out on the RHS controlling the Third Hand. Stimbod also becomes the seductive interface for the remote actuation of a body - the means by which a motion is displaced and repositioned from one body to another body in another place. Electronically connected  and coupled bodies can extrude agency, with a body's awareness neither being "all - here" nor "all - there".

Sodelujejo

Editing (film, video) Jurij Krpan

Artist, artistic group

Stelarc

Production

Venue

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Artwork
Antúnez Marcel·lí, Epizoo, Ljubljana, 15 February 1996, 01' 37"
Elsenaar Arthur; Scha Remko, The Varieties of Human Facial Expression, Mednarodni festival računalniške umetnosti, MKC Maribor, Ljubljana, 00' 40"
Antúnez Marcel·lí, Afasia, Ljubljana, 2 March 1999, 22' 43"