Stelarc is an Australian performance and installation artist who has internationally exhibited, presented and done performances in Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australia. He has visually probed and acoustically amplified his body. He has made three films of the inside of his body, filming 3m of the internal space of his lungs, stomach and colon. Between 1976-1988 he completed 25 body suspension performances with hooks in the skin. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems, the Internet and biotechnology to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body.

 

He has performed with a Third Hand, a Virtual Arm, a Stomach Sculpture and Exoskeleton, a six-legged walking robot. His Prosthetic Head is an embodied conversational agent that speaks to the person who interrogates it. As part of the Thinking Head Systems he collaborated with the Marcs Auditory Labs at the University of Western Sydney to develop the Articulated Head, the Floating Head and the Swarming Heads projects. He is surgically constructing and stem cell growing an Ear on Arm that will be electronically augmented and internet enabled. The first surgical procedures occurred in 2006. He has recently been performing with his four avatar and automaton clones on his Second Life site, exploring actual-virtual interfaces and gesture actuation of his avatar with Kinect. Publications about his artwork include Stelarc: The Monograph, edited by Marquard Smith, MIT Press, 2005; Stelarc: Political Prosthesis & Knowledge of the Body by Marina Grzinic-Mauhler
Maska & MKC (Ljubljana & Maribor), 2002 and The Cyborg Experiments: The Extensions of the Body in the Media Age,edited by Joanna Zylinska, Continuum Press (London & New York), 2002.

 

In 1997 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh USA. From 2000-2003 he was Senior Research Fellow at the Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham UK, where he developed the MUSCLE MACHINE, a 5m diameter walking machine using pneumatic rubber muscles. In 2003 he was awarded an Honorary Degree of Laws by Monash University. Between 2006-2011 he was  Senior Research Fellow and Visiting Artist at the Marcs Auditory Labs at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He received a New Projects grant from the Australia Council in 2010 to develop a micro-robot and in the same year he was also awarded the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica Hybrid Arts Prize. Between 2006-2012 he was Chair in Performance Art, School of Arts, Brunel University London. He is currently a Distinguished Research Fellow and Director of the Alternate Anatomies Lab, School of Design and Art (SODA), Curtin University, Perth.  Stelarc’s artwork is represented by the Scott Livesey Galleries in Melbourne.