Stelarc

If your not already familiar with the artist Stelarc, then prepare to be mesmerized/disgusted/impressed or any other of the many reactions his work can produce.

Artist Statement:
Stelarc is a performance artist who has visually probed and acoustically amplified his body. He has made 3 films of the inside of his body. Between 1976-1988 he completed 25 body suspension performances with hooks into the skin. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems, the Internet and biotechnology to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. He has performed with a THIRD HAND, a VIRTUAL ARM, a STOMACH SCULPTURE and EXOSKELETON, a 6-legged walking robot. His FRACTAL FLESH, PING BODY and PARASITE performances explored involuntary, remote and internet choreography of the body with electrical stimulation of the muscles. His PROSTHETIC HEAD is an embodied conversational agent that speaks to the person who interrogates it. He is surgically constructing an EXTRA EAR on his arm that will be internet enabled, making it publicly accessible acoustical organ for people in other places. He is presently performing as his avatar from his SECOND LIFE site.

This post will showcase one of his more recent pieces, Ear on Arm.

"I have always been intrigued about engineering a soft prosthesis using my own skin, as a permanent modification of the body architecture. The assumption being that if the body was altered it might mean adjusting its awareness. Engineering an alternate anatomical architecture, one that also performs telematically. Certainly what becomes important now is not merely the body's identity, but its connectivity- not its mobility or location, but its interface. In these projects and performances, a prosthesis is not seen as a sign of lack but rather as a symptom of excess. As technology proliferates and microminiaturizes it becomes biocompatible in both scale and substance and is incorporated as a component of the body. These prosthetic attachments and implants are not simply replacements for a part of the body that has been traumatized or has been amputated. These are prosthetic objects that augment the body's architecture, engineering extended operational systems of bodies and bits of bodies, spatially separated but electronically connected."

Spotlight: Eleni Dimaio

Eleni Dimaio's works are at once playful and arresting.  Reminiscent of childhood simplicity and comicality, they serve as catalysts of present state contemplations.  Her usually innocent subject matters are perverted but controlled and provocative.  Among her work, one finds themselves considering the shallow nature of a society that allows so much of itself to be influenced by value judgments and material aspirations.

All of her works are functional in some way or another, always inviting viewers to become part of the work.  A twisted clown sculpture brandishing a mirror doubles as a mask with peep holes directing viewers to an image of themselves as the outsider.  A decapitated seal yielding a mirror where it's wound should be and lying in a pool of glitter blood creates a similar eulogy for the less fortunate or adverse.  She also makes traditional clay forms like vases and dinner plates, but all in her own vein (see baby vases above).

Eleni has a knack for maintaining an optimistic and satirical attitude on top of it all.  I usually don't go for work like this, but there is something raw and honest about them.  They are strange but natural, playful and contemplative.  Keep an eye out everyone.

Eleni is a ceramics artist currently living and working in Cleveland, OH.  She received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art this year.  She is an awesome person and a killer friend.  To view her c/v, more of her work, or to contact her, visit her blog:

Eleni Dimaio's Rainbow Connection

Getting Out of Bed by Vanessa Telaro

Here's a read from Hack Writers that kept me sucked in the entire time.

If stories about the slippery slope of substance abuse and the difficulties of coping with life tickle your fancy, than give this one a go. Telaro does a fantastic job at highlighting the emotional turmoil that the mundane can deliver, especially when one is in a state of trying to find out where the puzzle pieces will fit after changing forever.

It's written in a very simple manner with excellent dialog. Good conflict and never over the top. Getting Out of Bed tells the tale of a day in the life of a once misguided youth trying to get by in early adulthood. The glamor days are gone, came and went, crashed and burned. All that is left are the still smoldering ashes of someone older trying to get by.

Getting Out of Bed

A State of Things To Come

Watching demolition of the cold storage building for the new overpass downtown.

Workers did not vacate the streets and bricks and cinder blocks are falling on people. A mass of people flee toward safety.

A revolt is initiated and the people of Cleveland are fighting with authorities. The riot turns violent as civilians are shot and killed and the people take over. The revolt starts a war that lasts decades.

People are constantly at war with each other and tribes develop as well as new languages.

One person who was involved with the initial revolt visits another tribe, which risks her life.

She meets with their leader, someone else who was involved in the beginning.

(Also, forgot to mention that one of the tribes kills and eats humans. They are savage and throw human meat at their enemies.)

She is astonished with how things have turned out. She gives a speech telling him how they started this war to save people and now the opposite is happening.

She scorns the savages as unfit for the compassion needed to create lawyers, doctors, psychologists, etc. out of each other and that the better society they both dreamed for isn't tangible anymore.

Three Types of Human Commodity

Here's a snippet of information others may be interested in:

Michael Tomasello of The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology argues that there are three types of human commodity.

• Goods
• Services
• Information

He cites examples for each one:

• An old lady asks you for some money on the side of the street
• An old lady asks you to help her cross the road
• An old lady asks you for directions

Notice how all three scenarios would surely produce different feelings in the hypothetical individual in inquisition. Now think about which one most people would be most apt to engage in. For most, the third scenario seems most susceptible.

What does this tell us?

Humans are an information giving species who would rather tell one about something as opposed to giving or doing for them. What other conclusions can we derive from this?

A Note, A Letter, A Poem

This wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for you. I suppose one could consider it some sort of anothers', hmm... influence (?). But my immediate thoughts inform me otherwise, instead finding mundane reasoning or explanation that at once satisfy said analysis.

Regardless, I got paid nine dollars and fifty cents and hour for its realization, providing it with some sort of economic value (which I suppose gives it merit of some type exterior to anything having to do with you or me).

If you do decide to read this then let it be known that the poem was written first. Maybe this gives this 'meaning' of a sort.

That's no more absurd than the usual shit that bombards our daily lives.

SOME SAY YER BAT SHIT CRAZY. OTHERS SAY YER CUTE. I AM SUDDENLY REMINDED OF THE AGITATION THAT STIRS UP SOMETIMES WITHIN MINUTES OF REINTRODUCING MYSELF TO THE CROWD THAT HAS CONTRIBUTED SUCH A GREAT DEAL TO THE CONDITIONING THAT CONTINUES TO SHAPE ME IN CLEVELAND. I'D BE LYING IF I TOLD YOU THAT I DON'T BELIEVE THIS IS SOMETIMES MUTUAL, AT LEAST IN SOME RESPECT, BUT I COULD REALLY START BLAMING MYSELF LESS.

I CAN DO A HANDFUL OF THINGS, BUT I WONT TELL YOU WHO'S HAND. I DON'T THINK YOU CARE, BUT NEITHER DO I (most of the time) WHICH IS WHY I'M STILL WRITING.

TURN AROUND AND GO SOMEWHERE.

Some notes on wreckin' silly (vibe) ation

Thinkin' 'bout my agile erectal agitation

Introduce you to my parents' epileptik flesh connection

Then dreams that rumble my mind as much as we let each other down

FREE SHOW!! Doctor Scientist (Philly)/Mr. California/CHINESE EYE

Let's kick off August the only way we can, with lots of noise!

Come check out CHINESE EYE rock yer socks with some other catz at this FREE SHOW at Now That's Class on Cleveland's West Side!!!

What else are you gonna do on a Sunday night?

August 1st, 9:00 pm - 11:00 pm

Now That's Class

11213 Detroit Ave.

Cleveland, OH

Doctor Scientist (Philly)

Mr. California

CHINESE EYE

And don't forget to keep those eardrums lubed with blood and desire by checking out Noise-O-Rama at MoCA Cleveland the following Wednesday. Who knew August could be so loud?