STELARC, artist

BIOGRAPHY (1997)

Stelarc is an Australian performance artist. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems and the Internet to explore, extend and enhance the body's parameters. He has performed with a Third Hand, a Virtual Arm, a Virtual Body and a Stomach Sculpture. He has filmed the inside of his lungs, stomach and colon - approximately two metres of internal space. He has done twenty five body suspensions with insertions into the skin, in different positions and varying situations in remote locations.

For Fractal Flesh, as part of Telepolis, he developed a touch-screen interfaced Muscle Stimulation System, enabling remote access, actuation and choreography of the body. Performances such as Ping Body and Parasite probe notions of telematic scaling and the engineering of external, extended and virtual nervous systems for the body using the Internet. Recently for Kampnagel, he completed Exoskeleton - a pneumatically powered 6-legged walking machine actuated by arm gestures.

In 1995 Stelarc received a three year Fellowship from The Visual Arts/ Craft Board of The Australia Council. In 1997 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He is presently Artist-In-Residence for Hamburg City. In 1998 he was appointed a Research Consultant for the Faculty of Art and Design at the Nottingham Trent University.
His art is represented by the Sherman Galleries in Sydney.

In 1994 he participated in :

• "Mutations de l' Image" at the Videotheque de Paris, France;
  
• "Bodies and Machines" at the Charleroi Dance Biennale, Belgium;
  
• "Virtual Futures" at the University of Warwick, U.K; and
  
• "25 Years of Australian Performance Art" at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery in Sydney.

He also exhibited, made installations and performed for :

• "International Symposium on Electronic Arts" in Helsinki;
  
• "Unstable Media" in Rotterdam;
  
• "Generated Realities 11 - The Body and Computer" in Berlin and for ACREQ in Montreal.

In 1995 he participated in :

• "Greenmill Dance Project", Melbourne;
  
• "Brain / Computer Congress", Munich;
  
• "CeBIT '95", Hanover;
  
• "Dance '95", Munich;
  
• "Virtual Futures", Coventry; and
  
• "Biennale of Ideas", Sydney