In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Extra Ear:Ear on the Arm BlenderStelarc Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Blender. Teknikunst—Meat Market, Melbourne 2005. Photograph: Stelarc. Collaborator Nina Sellars stands with the Blender during an installation photograph. Text credit: K. Conden and A. Douglas. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2.Blender (3D Model). Teknikunst—Meat Market, Melbourne 2005. Image: Adam Fiannaca. The installation itself stands at just over 1.6 meters high and is anthropomorphic in (...) scale and structure. Text credit: K. Conden and A. Douglas. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 3.Blender. Teknikunst—Meat Market, Melbourne 2005. Photograph: Stelarc. Every few minutes the Blender automatically circulates or "blends" its contents via a system of compressed air pumps and a pneumatic actuator. Text credit: K. Conden and A. Douglas.[End Page 117] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 4.Ear Scaffold. Los Angeles, Melbourne 2006. Photographer: Nina Sellars. The preoperative scaffolding that was surgically placed below the skin's surface of performance artist Stelarc. Text credit: R. Ferro. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 5.Blender (Biomaterial). Teknikunst—Meat Market, Melbourne 2005. Photograph: Cameron Jones. Both artists, Stelarc and Nina Sellars, undertook liposuction operations specifically for the purpose of this new work and have succeeded in securing the sanitized isolation and, most importantly, the legal ownership of the remnants of the procedures. Text credit: K. Conden and A. Douglas. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 6.Hole Hooks Forceps. As a guest at Cornell University's conference "Digital Bodies" in 2001, Stelarc spoke of his desire to implant an ear that could pick up sound. His plans become a reality in the photograph taken during surgery. Text credit: R. Ferro. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 7.Extra Ear: Ear on the Arm. Los Angeles, Melbourne 2006. Photographer: Nina Sellars. Stelarc's future plans are to implant Bluetooth technology into the Ear on the Arm in a subsequent surgery so that the ear will pick up sound which will be transmitted via the Internet. Text credit: R. Ferro. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 8.Blender (Sterile Hood). Teknikunst—Meat Market, Melbourne 2005. Photograph: Stelarc. The biomaterials are now housed within the Blender's industrial casing, on exhibition at the Meat Market Gallery B in North Melbourne until August 18. Text credit: K. Conden and A. Douglas.[End Page 118]Stelarc- Biographical NotesStelarc is an Australian artist who has performed extensively in Japan, Europe, and the USA—including new music, dance festivals, and experimental theater. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems, and the Internet to explore alternate, intimate, and involuntary interfaces with the body. He has performed with a THIRD HAND, a VIRTUAL ARM, a VIRTUAL BODY and a STOMACH SCULPTURE. He has acoustically and visually probed the body—having amplified brainwaves, blood-flow and muscle signals and filmed the inside of his lungs, stomach, and colon, approximately two meters of internal space. He has done twenty-five body SUSPENSIONS with insertions into the skin, in different positions and varying situations in private gallery spaces and in remote locations.For FRACTAL FLESH, as part of Telepolis in 1995, 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 (1996, 1997) probe notions of telematic scaling and the engineering of external, extended, and virtual nervous systems for the body using the Internet. In 1998 for Kampnagel, he completed EXOSKELETON—a pneumatically powered six-legged walking machine actuated by arm gestures. During 2000, he completed an EXTENDED ARM—a manipulator with eleven degrees-of-freedom that extends his arm to primate proportions and a MOTION PROSTHESIS—an intelligent, compliant servo-mechanism that enables the performance of precise, repetitive, and accelerated prompting or programming of the arms in real time. In 2002, with the collaboration of the Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems Group, COGs, University of Sussex, and TNTU, the HEXAPOD robot prototype was developed. The six-legged MUSCLE MACHINE was constructed with the assistance of The Nottingham Trent University Engineering team, using fluidic rubber muscle actuators. The PROSTHETIC... (shrink)