Stelarc: the artist with an ear on his arm

Extreme body-artist Stelarc – who has previously suspended himself from the ceiling using hooks in his flesh – is now planning to connect an ear, which has been growing on his arm, to the internet.

The BBC reports a miniature microphone, with wireless internet connection, will be inserted into the ear which was "partly surgically constructed and partly cell-grown". It will enable people to listen to and track the artist's movements through a GPS device placed on the body part.

The internet-ear project is just the latest exploit from a performance artist with a history of putting his body through strange and physically demanding procedures.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Who is Stelarc?

Born Stelios Arcadiou in Cyprus and raised in suburban Melbourne, Australia, Stelarc changed his name in 1972 after embarking on his career in performance art. For more than four decades he has tested the limitations of the human body, using his own as a canvas for his ideas. He is based at the Alternate Anatomies Laboratory at Curtin University, Perth, Australia.

What are his career highlights?

The 69-year-old started out creating multimedia performances, but soon moved on to suspending himself from the ceiling with ropes and then hooks inserted into his flesh. Between 1976-1988 he completed 25 flesh-hook body suspension performances. Other works have involved medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics and virtual reality systems. Stelarc has performed with a robotic arm and an exoskeleton; wired himself to the internet by attaching electrodes to various muscles, which could be activated by remote users, and ingested a stomach sculpture filmed via endoscope. The "Ear on Arm" project began in 2006 when a "biocompatible scaffold" was surgically inserted into his left forearm, to enable him to grow the ear. Why does he do it?

Stelarc has said in interviews that he uses his own body for artworks and performances because he would find it difficult to persuade anyone else to volunteer theirs for his gruelling projects.

What's it all about?

Stelarc's art explores ideas around the limitations and potential obsolescence of the human body. In an interview with Wired, Stelarc said he saw artists as "early warning systems" for presenting possible futures that could be "examined, evaluated, perhaps appropriated, often discarded".

What do people think of his art?

Cyberpunk writer and friend William Gibson has said he sees Stelarc's art "in the context that includes circuses, freak shows, medical museums, the passions of solitary inventors". He doesn't see it as futuristic, but as "moments of the purest technologically induced cognitive disjunction". Others have criticised Stelarc's work. The BBC reports the "Ear on Arm" project caused controversy when it started as surgeons questioned whether such an operation should have been carried out, "given the absence of clinical need".

What's the ear about?

Stelarc told ABC the ear project is a sign of things to come. "Increasingly now, people are becoming internet portals of experience ... imagine if I could hear with the ears of someone in New York, imagine if I at the same time could see with the eyes of someone in London." There will be no on-off switch, so once the surgery is performed and the device connected, the microphone will be permanently activated. People across the globe will be able to 'tune in' to Stelarc 24 hours a day, seven days a week.