Stelarc is the most celebrated artist in the world working within technology and the visual arts. He is both an artist and a phenomenon, using his body as medium and exhibition space. Working in the interface between the body and the machine, employing virtual reality, robotics, medical instruments, prosthetics, and the Internet, Stelarc's art includes physical acts that don't always look survivable - or, as science fiction novelist William Gibson puts it in his foreword, "sometimes seem to include the possibility of terminality." Stelarc's projects include Third Hand, a manipulable robotic arm attached to the artist and activated by EMG from other body areas or tele-operated by others; Amplified Body, the artist's amplified brainwaves, muscles, pulse, and blood flow; and Stomach Sculptures, devices--or "aesthetic adornments" - placed in the artist's stomach and presented through video. Works in progress include the Third Ear Project, a soft prosthesis constructed from skin and cartilage and attached to the artist's skull with titanium pins. Stelarc's work both reflects and determines new directions in performance art and body art. Although there have been hundreds of articles written about Stelarc since he began performing in the late 1960s, Stelarc: The Monograph is the first comprehensive study of Stelarc's work practice in over thirty years years. Gathering a range of writers who approach the work from a variety of perspectives, it includes William Gibson's account of his meetings with Stelarc, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker's emphatic "We Are All Stelarcs Now," and Stelarc himself in conversation with Marquard Smith. Taken together, these writers give us a multiplicity of ways to think about Stelarc.

Author Biography

Julie Clarke has written widely on the posthuman and the visual arts. Timothy Druckrey is a curator and writer and editor of Ars Electronica: Facing the Future (MIT Press, 1999). William Gibson is the author of many books, including Neuromancer and, most recently, Pattern Recognition. Jane Goodall is Director of Research in the College of Arts, Education, and Social Sciences at the University of Western Sydney. Amelia Jones is Professor and Pilkington Chair in the History of Art at the University of Manchester and the author of Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada (MIT Press, 2004). Arthur Kroker is Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture, and Theory, and Marilouise Kroker is Senior Research Scholar, both at the University of Victoria. Brian Massumi is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the State University of New York, Albany. Stelarc is a leading international performance artist.