| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £2.65
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Stelarc The Monograph (Electronic Culture: History, Theory and Practice) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.65, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"With contributions from the critics and theorists who know Stelarc best, this book contains illuminating commentary on and analysis of his technoperformative work that is as compelling and as disturbing as anything found in the most radical of science fiction novels. Welcome to the world of Stelarc." - Steven Kurtz, Critical Art Ensemble"
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
"A Nietzschean experimental site, Stelarc delivers a punch of utmost severity, joining performance art with prosthetic innovation and philosophical reflection. This book brings together a colloquy of technowarriors who probe the limits of the eviscerable body, its post-pornographic submission, and hybrid presumptions. One imagines Heidegger traversed by Schreber."--Avital Ronell, Professor of German, Comparative Literature, and English, New York University, author of *The Test Drive* and *The Telephone Book* "For far too long there has been a gap on many bookshelves waiting to be filled by a publication like *Stelarc: The Monograph*. This rich critical analysis and celebration of one of the world's most influential, prescient, provocative and discussed artists is an invaluable and welcome resource for everyone engaged with discourses and disciplines spanning visual, performance and digital art, cyberculture, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and robotics."--Lois Keidan, Director, Live Art Development Agency, LondonPlease note: Quote was sent in July and will appear on the book jacket.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
glittering vision of a transhumanist future
15 May 2007
Format:Hardcover
In the early 80s, I brought Stelarc to speak at Caltech. He showed up with a mechanical third arm and a collection of slides. He proceeded to declaim at length about his previous art performances throughout the world, and his vision of what his performances were meant to convey to a lay audience. Then, I recently ran across this book, with a foreword by William Gibson, no less.
It is a collection of essays by various intellectuals, revolving around analysing Stelarc. His worldview is presented. A different approach from that epitomised in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Kapek's RUR, Saberhagen's Berserkers or the Terminator movies. Those echo the fear of a machine, born of man, that turns against humans. Instead, Stelarc's view is much cheerier. He is a performance artist, whose exhibitions are physical metaphors that suggest a peaceful evolution of humans, where we incorporate technological items into or perhaps on or around our bodies. He draws a distinction between Darwinian evolution, where obsolescence can mean extinction. Instead, any differences between us and machines are elided, as we absorb what they can offer, to exhance and extend our capabilities.
To some this is repulsive. To others, it is a glittering vision of a transhumanist future. Where we can someday (soon?) overcome the limitations of frail flesh. The book has echoes of views espoused by Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil. Though it does not go so far as to posit a technological singularity in the near future.
The photos in the book show Stelarc's remarkable talent. He has exhibited in Tokyo, Copenhagen, London and many other places since the 1980s. In many of the photos, he is naked, but adorned with some strange electromechanical gizmo, that has some type of feedback with his body. (When he spoke at Caltech, he was fully clothed.) Other photos show him dangling by many fish hooks through his skin. In one instance, one storey above a city street.
At least one chapter comments on the irony of his exhibitions. While he speaks of a metaphor of transcending the human form, his very nakedness starkly emphasises that form.
Of course, when he first did his exhibitions, all he could provide were rough metaphors. Limited by the crude mechanical devices of the time. But as microminiturisation proceeds, and as genetic engineering takes on more of an engineering aspect, all coupled with a world wide web, then he looks prescient.
It is a collection of essays by various intellectuals, revolving around analysing Stelarc. His worldview is presented. A different approach from that epitomised in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Kapek's RUR, Saberhagen's Berserkers or the Terminator movies. Those echo the fear of a machine, born of man, that turns against humans. Instead, Stelarc's view is much cheerier. He is a performance artist, whose exhibitions are physical metaphors that suggest a peaceful evolution of humans, where we incorporate technological items into or perhaps on or around our bodies. He draws a distinction between Darwinian evolution, where obsolescence can mean extinction. Instead, any differences between us and machines are elided, as we absorb what they can offer, to exhance and extend our capabilities.
To some this is repulsive. To others, it is a glittering vision of a transhumanist future. Where we can someday (soon?) overcome the limitations of frail flesh. The book has echoes of views espoused by Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil. Though it does not go so far as to posit a technological singularity in the near future.
The photos in the book show Stelarc's remarkable talent. He has exhibited in Tokyo, Copenhagen, London and many other places since the 1980s. In many of the photos, he is naked, but adorned with some strange electromechanical gizmo, that has some type of feedback with his body. (When he spoke at Caltech, he was fully clothed.) Other photos show him dangling by many fish hooks through his skin. In one instance, one storey above a city street.
At least one chapter comments on the irony of his exhibitions. While he speaks of a metaphor of transcending the human form, his very nakedness starkly emphasises that form.
Of course, when he first did his exhibitions, all he could provide were rough metaphors. Limited by the crude mechanical devices of the time. But as microminiturisation proceeds, and as genetic engineering takes on more of an engineering aspect, all coupled with a world wide web, then he looks prescient.
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
