Has the body become obsolete? What is the future of sexuality in the high-tech age? Have we always been cyborgs? This text provides a state-of-the-art analysis of the challenges posed to our bodies by technology. Taking as its starting point the work of the highly influential performance artists, Orlan and Stelarc, it explores the new conceptions of embodiment, identity and otherness in the age of new technologies. Highlighting the playfulness of digital aesthetics, the book investigates the aesthetic and ethical issues around the ownership of our bodies and the experiments we perform on them. In this way, the book explores how humanism, and ideas of "the human", have been placed under increasing scrutiny as a result of developments in science, media and communications.
Author Biography
Joanna Zylinska is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Surrey Roehampton and author of On Spiders, Cyborgs and Being Scared: The Feminine and the Sublime.
