Technologised Bodies

1)"“To what extent are we already experiencing a man -machine symbiosis that has turned us into cyborgs [or posthuman bodies]?” Christiane Paul (Digital Art, p 166)

When you simply look at one person who is wearing glasses, you can realise how have we been experiencing a man-machine symbiosis. Another example is like those who want to own an attractive body's line, they would choose to wear a case in certain shape for a long term to help improve the body line. Also, the disabled people would use wheel chair or some kind of externally mechanical legs to support their steps when they walk.
These man-machine symbiosis appears generally and commonly in our society.People rely on machine and it is gradually not easy to seperate them. I believe we have already experience a man-machine symbiosis in a high extent.

2. What are some pros and cons of becoming a cyborg?

Pros:
Frankly speaking, machine like mobile phone, glasses even the prosthetic-fake arms etc., helps human a lot in terms of increasing convenience in tackling problems in daily life. It, in a certain extent, reduces our use of time as, lets say, there can be three hands doing things concurrently. It also allows human to do something they are not used to do because of its hazard and danger.
Cons:
Being too addicted in using mechine, human becomes dependent.
Out cells and organs may no longer adapt to the condition once the machine is abandoned.
Human body's function become worse and worse.
The attachment may harm our body once the connection between human and machine is handled badly.

3.What do you think of Stelarc’s work?

After I have seen his work, prosthetic fake arms, the first impression araised in my mind is that it looks like a character in the film (Spiderman) called doc_ock. He is a scientist and professor. He has invented a prosthetic arms which is able to be attached to human's back bone. It functions as people's another pairs of arms. At the end of the film, he realised his failure of electronic terchnique which has led to his death.

sp3_doc_ock, Yahoo
http://images.google.com.hk/images?hl=zh-TW&source=hp&q=stelarc&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
(accessed 28 Oct 2009)

Stelarc's work totally gives me this sense of terror and horror. It disobeys the natural law of human structure. Especially for the work (so-called work of art) in which a third ear in grafted onto his forearm, it is extremely disgusting. Organ is in a wrong possition, but the artist even the public says that it is a work representing contemporary art media. Appreciated by somebody, I disagree with his presentation of art and think he is just self-mutilating.
Look at the video below....
It is shocking and provocative!

Interesting

See?
Although it is not so related to the topic per week,
it is so interesting....how can't I put it here!

Online Identities

Introduction of my friend 's identities:
Here comes Cindy Wan.
She showed me her various online identities, such as the one in HK Discuss forum and My Space, Facebook, MSN and ICQ, Xanga and Blogspot, the email boxes....Gmail, Hotmail, Lingnan...etc.
Obviously, she is just like the others in HongKong; more than one online identities she have gotten and they let her do different things through internet.

Introduction of my online identities:
I have totally 13 online identities. They are used in Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, Lingnan U and the online blog like Xanga, Blogspot. Also the communication flatform like Facebook, MSN, ICQ and some specific web sites such as Youtube, iYellowbus, HKartists, HKflash.
I can use different identities in various webs. The advantage is that I can change my identities often to suit my different wants.
Sometimes, an identity is required to be approved to access some of the specific regions in the web. It seems that you are one of their guest and belonging to a group.

Online Identity by Aaron Darc


"Aaron Darc on Online Identity",Google.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6293366579547571198&ei=5-reSs6ZAZr8qAOc4dG3Ag&q=online+identity+&hl=en#
(Accessed Oct 21, 2009)

Mouchette


Mouchette
www.mouchette.org/index.html
(Accessed Oct 21,2009)

Digital Art

What are some challenges digital art presents to the art world (ie galleries, exhibition goers, art critics and scholars)?

-The art work presented is rather complicated. Usually very broad category like science, music, physical movement, film is combined into one work of art. It is then difficult to classify it.

-As it is complicated, people need plenty of time to understand. More discriptions of the work of art are needed.

-For digital art, we need more digital equipments and eletronic facilities to help generate that art work, but some of the galleries may not own these kinds of offer.

-The form of it is difficult to be confirmed, and the standard for evaluating a digital art is changed. It is then hard to critque.

-It needs more audience participation. However, it may not be suitable and available for some people like elderly, disable. They then cannot understand that work efficiently.

-Dig. art like trend. It appears fast but passes fast too. People may forget and hard to follow it.

- If it is a web art, those people living in the Third world and Totalitarian countries, like North Korea, have no chance to appreciate it. Therefore, web art is restricted.

-It is easily copied. People can generate lots of copies in a short time.

-The value of virtue may decrease as Dig. art may be related to commerce sometimes.




An example from Rafael Lozano-Hemmer








"Eye Contact is the first piece of the Shadow Box series of interactive displays with a built-in computerized tracking system. This piece shows eight hundred simultaneous videos of people lying down, resting. As soon as a public member is detected, his or her presence triggers the miniature video portraits to wake up: hundreds of people simultaneously turn to look at the visitor directly, creating an uncanny experience that questions who is the observer and who is the observed. "
Eye Contact,Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/english/projects/eyecontact.htm
(accessed Oct 14, 2009)









Example of net art.




Jodi (Joan Hemskeerk and Dirk Paesmans)
( Netherlands, Belgium, Barcelona-based)
•http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/

This is a net work made by a net art group.
The interesting part of it is that you can be the participator of the art work.
Once click of a certain area, the image of the screen changes.
The pattern are repeated every time you click on it, but the possitions of the elements are rearranged all the time.
I like the monotone in red and black of it.
And the pattern is special.
It is quite different from their early work which just like an error.

Review of the "Mission to Earth"

"Being alone in other planet, I work on the same thing every day of my life...
I get used to it. I am sigular. Everybody is diffrent from me. I am bored and tired but calm."

" To observe her movement, I look at her in thousands of angle, various perspectives, different lens with color, serveral times in one day. I am interested in her. She is ordinary but not the same with other."

Do you feel that they're having this self assertion inside the film?
I do.
I have been penetrated by a "self-isolated" atmosphere.
At the same time, this was being peeped.
And I am the one witnessing how this whole thing has happened as the peeper told me this.

What I also discovered after the film have been settled down in my mind is that in a traditional film, what I, the audience would likely to concentrate on is firstly the plot or story (narration). Secondly is the subtext of it. Finally, I will try to appreciate its way of shooting, framing, editting.

Interestingly, the situation was totally reverse when I watch "Mission to Earth". What I have focused on was its appearance including the colours delivered, the composition and ratio of each seperated boxes, the pattern of interaction between illustration or movement inside the boxes. And then the meaning behind each design comes to me. Finally, I will try to think of the story. What the me is telling in the voice over.

Although it is comparatively strange, maybe boring, and weird, there could be something worth to be appreciated.
Like the beauty in terms of Rhythm and Random.
And the arrangement of the time lasting of each box, sound, voice and also the proportion of the boxes' sizes.

How's Youtube going?

QUOTE3

“Whereas it used to be that ‘creative’ or ‘well-made’ videos could get a ‘huge amount of [Youtube] views’, she says, now it was the videos that are sensationalist’ or represent the ‘lowest common denominator’ get a lot of views, providing what the ‘mainstream media’ was
providing before the emergence of YouTube, and that the people who make up the ‘core’ of YouTube were ‘running away’ from the mainstream media to avoid.”

(Jean Burgess, Joshua Green, “Agency and Controversy in the YouTube Community” Internet Research 9.0: Rethinking Community, Rethinking Place, Copenhagen, 15-18 October, 2008, http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15383/1/15383.pdf)

-------------

The reason I choose this quote is that, it arouses my reconsideration towards the derivation of Youtube in few years ago.

Youtube let people upload videos freely.These videos are usually considered as very "funny", "up-dated", "ridiculous", "eye-catching", "controversial", "hot topic" ...and that's why people eager to upload these video and to create a "discussion wave" on the internet.
However, when this passion and eagerness of generating a hot issue to talk with passed, and when people get used to uploading and searching...and discoveriing and obtaining...they don't find themselves have already been one of the "ordinary" and surrounded by an non-stop renewal of issues.......
What a sorrowful situation....