Fractal Flesh
From Cyborg Anthropology
A concept introduced in Parasite Visions by Stelarc First published in TechnoMorphica
Excerpt
Consider a body that can extrude its awareness and action in other bodies or bits of bodies in other places. An alternate operational entity that is spatially distributed but electronically connected. A movement that you initiate in Melbourne would be displaced and manifested in another body in Rotterdam. A shifting, sliding awareness that is neither "all-here" in this body nor "all-there" in those bodies. This is not about a fragmented body but a multiplicity of bodies and part s of bodies prompting and remotely guiding each other. This is not about master-slave control mechanisms but feedback-loops of alternate awareness, agency and of split physiologies. Imagine one side of your body being remotely guided whilst the other side could collaborate with local agency.
You watch a part of your body move but you have neither initiated it nor are you contracting your muscles to produce it. Imagine the consequences and advantages of being a split body with voltage-in, inducing the behavior of a remote agent and voltage-out of your body to control peripheral devices.
This would be a more complex and interesting body - not simply a single entity with one agency but one that would be a host for a multiplicity of remote and alien agent s. Of different physiologies and in varying locations. Certainly there may be justification, in some situations and for particular actions to tele-operate a human arm rather than a robot manipulator - for if the task is to be performed in a non-hazardous location, then it might be an advantage to use a remote human arm - as it would be attached to another arm and a mobile, intelligent body.
Consider a task begun by a body in one place is completed by another body in another place. Or the transmission and conditioning of a skill. The body not as a site of inscription but as a medium for the manifestation of remote agents. This physically split body may have one arm gesturing involuntarily (remotely actuated by an unknown agent), whilst the other arm is enhanced by an exoskeleton prosthesis to perform with exquisite skill and with extreme speed. A body capable of incorporating movement that from moment t o moment would be a pure machinic motion performed with neither memory nor desire ...
External Link
Further Reading
- Fractal Anthropology
- Fractal Prosthetics
- Fractal Self
- Fractal Value
- Fractal Flesh
- Rhizome
