StickMan / miniStickMan is an interactive installation which is animated by a background algorithm. For the performance, Stelarc will be actuated by the StickMan exoskeleton, with visitors able to insert their own movements by bending the limbs of the miniStickMan, contributing to the choreography. Stelarc can pivot on one leg, manipulating his projected shadow and modulating the live video feedback – an interplay of automated and improvised movements. Sensors on the spine of the exoskeleton generate the soundscape.
Stelarc, StickMan/miniStickMan, 2017, aluminium, pneumatics, electronics. Documentation of The Dedalus Project: Chrissie Parrot Arts, Perth, 2017. Photograph: Toni Wilkinson. Courtesy the artist and Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne
For decades, Stelarc has interrogated the limits of his body, augmenting, modifying and subjecting his flesh to various challenges, from bodily suspension to the intrusions of prosthetics, robotics, cybernetics, and biotechnology. For Stelarc, the contemporary body has become a contemporary chimera of meat, metal and code, exploring the interconnections of hybrid human-machine systems and their increasingly blurred boundaries of human agency and machine aliveness. The StickMan/miniStickMan performance explores alternative anatomical architectures of biology and technology. Rather than issues of control and coercion, the interaction generates additional operational and performative possibilities.
Sound design Petros Vouris; engineering Tim Jewell; programming Steve Berrick; audio engineer Alwyn Nixon-Lloyd; technical assistance and video production Steven Alyian.
Where: RMIT Gallery, 344 Swanston Street, Melbourne.
When: Saturday 26 February, 12.30-5pm
Entry: Free
This event coincides with the closing day of Future U.
