Stelarc (b.1946, Melbourne, Australia)
Artist, researcher. Graduated in Art and Crafts from Monash and Melbourne Universities, T.S.T.C. His research focuses on contemporary arts, including theatre, music and visual arts, specializing in innovative technologies. Stelarc puts special emphasis on robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality systems and the Internet to explore alternative, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. He is well-known for projects such as: Filming the inside of the body (1973-1975), Third Hand Project (1976-1981), Industrial Robot Arms (1991-1994), Exoskeleton (1998), Hexapod (2002), The Third Ear (2003), Prosthetic Head (2003). In the late 1960s, Stelarc performed extreme experiments on his own body (public surgical operations, gastroscopy and body-suspension) but then switched to interpreting the human body as a techno-biological structure (impulse action on the body through external interfaces, additional mechanic and techno-biological prosthetics). He participated in numerous solo exhibitions, presentations and performances in Australia, USA, Europe and Japan. Since 1976, Stelarc has given lectures on evolution and human-machine systems in various universities around the world. In 1995, he 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. In 2000, Stelarc was awarded an Honorary Degree of Laws by Monash University. He completed an artist-in-residence position in Art and Technology at the Faculty of Art and Design at Ohio State University in 2003. Stelarc is currently Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at The Nottingham Trent University (Nottingham, UK).