PROSTHETIC AESTHETICS: PERFORMING THE CYBORG BODY

The cyborg has arrived with a vengeance. No longer the techno-mystical creatures of our collective imagination and anxieties, cyborgs - cybernetic organisms - have crept out of the pages of science fiction stories, off the the screens of the local Cineplex and into our hospitals, workplaces and homes. Plugged into computer networks, sporting plastichips, surfing through 160 channels of cable television... we are them. But if, as anthropologist Mary Douglas observed, each person treats his or her body as a reflection of the society in which they live, then our cyborg bodies are still in a state of tremendous flux and uncertainty. Rapid advances in biomedical and communications technologies litter the landscape with multiple, and often competing, visions of the cyborg body. The cyborg is simultaneously the dream of a disembodied human consciousness floating through the computer matrix and the ghastly sight of an elderly relative hooked-up to a complex system of 'life-sustaining' machinery. In her seminal essay, A Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway urges us to take "responsibility for the construction" of our cyborg identities. Decoding the cyborg subject is a complex and immense task, but as Haraway recognizes what is at stake could be our very survival.

How do individuals concerned about emerging human/machine couplings go about constructing cyborg identities? Where do we begin to look for images of the cyborg that are empowering and liberating? What is needed are imaginative resources, sites where we can creatively and safely explore a range of possible scenarios for human/machine fusion. One territory which appears to offer a particularly fruitful resource for exploring cyborg identity can be found at the intersection of robotics and performance art. Home to a loosely-related family of performance artists and interactive installations, the area of artistic investigation I am designating as 'cyborg body performance' is characterized by an active and lively prosthetic aesthetics. That is to say, an art practiced at the very border where human and machine blur, merge and recombine.

What follows below is a survey of four widely divergent cyborg body performances. The projects sampled were chosen not because they are in any way conclusive, but because they creatively and critically examine a broad range of issues vital to contemporary cyborg body politics.


PUNISHING PROSTHESES
Using materials including brass, highly polished steel and plastic, sculptor and jeweler Ira Sherman constructs wearable mechanical sculptures for contemporary cyborg bodies. Powered by compressed air and gasoline, Sherman's works are lively prostheses that actively respond to the human body. With names like The Arbitrator and C.I.A. Survival Kit Pendant, Sherman's devices enact, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, bizarre and alarming future/present scenarios. His Pavlovian Trainer, for example, is a dangerous looking structure reminiscent of the headgear worn by ancient Roman Centurians. Powered by pressurized argon, the Pavlovian Trainer covers the head, neck and chin of an assigned performer. As the individual begins to speak, a sensor-driven pneumatic clamp springs into action to muzzle his or her mouth. The muzzling action is reinforced by the sound of ringing bells and the pressure exerted by additional pneumatic talons which clamp down and squeeze the subject between the eyes and the nape of the neck. The Pavlovian Trainer is unforgiving; once locked inside, the performer is engaged in an unwinable struggle for expression with no choice but to submit and fall silent.

There's a certain playfulness operating in Sherman's work, in part, because his devices seem so extreme and ridiculous. Yet, for all its dark whimsy, Sherman's Pavlovian Trainer carries strong Foucaldian overtones. It is a disciplinary machine designed specifically for behavior modification. Positioned over the head, clamping down on pressure points near the eyes and back of the neck, the Pavlovian Trainer, aggressively and relentlessly renders the body vulnerable and helpless. In its grips, the cyborg body becomes a site for control, surveillance and punishment reminding us that the politics of domination hover near the border between organic and machine.

THE PROMISE OF INTERACTIVITY
The politics of human/machine couplings could just as easily be about such liberatory notions as cooperation, alliance-building and networking as domination, control and power. Individuals with artificial legs must learn to work with their prosthesis, to send the correct impulses, in order to achieve movement. Interactive environments - those requiring input from both machines and humans - work in a similar fashion. Interactivity depends on reducing behaviors to a set of simple rules that when followed by each participant achieves its pre-described goal of affecting the environment.

In her installation Terrain 01 Ulrike Gabriel, a member of the Frankfurt artist group OTHER-SPACE, explores the notions of cooperation essential to interactivity. In Terrain 01 human participants utilize brainwave sensors to interface with a cybernetic colony of 30 solar-powered robots. The brainwave sensor detects the varying state(s) of the participant's relaxation, which in turn regulates the light supply which powers the robots. If the participant is relaxed, the robots begin to move and make noise; if stress is detected the colony remains quiet. All three components operating in Terrain 01 - human, robotic and natural (light) - must cooperate and fulfill their assigned role if the overall goal of moving the colony is to be achieved. Acting effectively like a large organic semi-conductor, the human participant's task is to stay relaxed. Relaxation demands great concentration and Gabriel has slyly thrown in the extra obstacle of sound to test the ability of the human participants to integrate into the system. In order to achieve a state of relaxation, many human participants find it necessary to close their eyes; the noise the robots emit when they begin to move can interrupt this state, cause excitement and register as stress, grinding the colony to a halt. By asking participants to fit in to its environment, Terrain 01 foregrounds ways in which interactivity will necessarily lead to new cultural practices as we learn to look at machine/human relationships in terms of contribution rather than control.

CYBORGS FOR URBAN SURVIVAL
However, if new, emerging ways of experiencing the world displace traditional conventions too quickly, the side effects could be tragic. Developments in communications technologies, for example, have created new representational spaces that are rapidly displacing physical realities. In the new city of simulation, the flat screen of the monitor becomes our topography, the information matrix our roadway, the World Wide Web our meeting place. The physical city seems to have disappeared, lost under the weight of high technology. Its public spaces have been reconfigured into a a series of private cyborg bodies, alienated from their physical environment.

Working as a sort of cyborg for urban survival project, The Urban Colonisation and Orientation Gear (UCOG-144) recovers the physical city by strategically employing the very tools of technology that have marked it obsolete. The brainchild of Projekt Atol Communications Technologies (PACT), an artist group located in Ljubljana, Slovenia, UCOG-144 is a portable, mobile communications system that enables performers to individually reconnect with the urban environment. Donning a backpack which contains a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS), transceiver, audio beacon and wireless modems, performers walk through the streets of Ljubljana carving out 'paths of colonization.' With their bodies functioning as satellite dishes that both transmit and receive information, performers are able to track their physical coordinates in real time and create a new awareness of their location within the urban environment. The sounds, images, and thoughts performers collect during their strolls are posted on Projeckt Atol's World Wide Web site, intimately linking the physical space of the city to the new space of simualtion. Using both bodies and technology to actively re-register the city, UCOG-144 executes a prosthetic aesthetic that both extends and regenerates the urban environment.

SUBVERSION THROUGH DISEMBODIMENT
By appropriating technologies originally designed for military employment, Projeckt Atol is able to subvert their intended use: prostheses for social change, not war! A similar spirit of subversion can be found in the guerrilla videoconference performances of U.S. artist Keith Roberson. Videoconferencing software allows individuals to transmit real-time images, sound and text via modems to computer screens around the world. Utilized primarily by schools, businesses and universities, videoconferencing has already established set rules of etiquette that dictate the form and procedure. Conferencing occurs at pre-scheduled times and public screenings are announced via World Wide Web sites. Most conferencing mimics the conventions of broadcast media: talking heads at one space communicate with talking heads at another. The threat inherent in the establishment of such conventions is that this potentially innovative and democratizing technology will adopt the homogenized protocol of broadcast television, shutting out alternative cyborg imagery and marginalizing or censoring controversial viewpoints.

In the Fall of 1995, Roberson launched a series of 'terrorist' performances that were designed to challenge commonly held assumptions about videoconference communications. Acting as a disembodied cyborg hijacker, Roberson would travel to busy videoconferencing reflectors - publicly accessible spaces which allow up to 40 participants to connect and conference simultaneously - and hold the site hostage by interrupting planned videoconferencing activities by bombarding the site with uninvited sounds and images. The reactions of Roberson's 'victims' ranged from amusement to outrage. Some would join-in the performances, while others would try to ignore the transmissions or disconnect from the system entirely. Both playful and aggressive, Roberson's disembodied interventions challenge videoconference users to not only confront the limitations they have placed upon the technology, but to also explore the boundaries of both the technology and their own bodies.

What sort of conclusions, if any, can we draw from this diverse survey of cyborg performances? There really is no one answer. The projects strongly suggest that it will be possible, even necessary to occupy multiple cyborg identities, perhaps even simultaneously, as new cultural practices emerge. They also illustrate the need for more innovative and diverse images of the cyborg body. Only by sampling varying visions can we measure change, recognize promising couplings and sort out bodily boundaries. In other words, begin to map out a future of prosthesis and synthesis.

© Laura McGough is an independent curator and media artist located somwehere along the Washington/Baltimore sprawl. She can be contacted at noamds@cais.com
MESH film/video/multimedia/art #10,MESH is published by Experimenta Media Arts