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1. We have never had a mind of our own: A Poetics of the Integrated Circuit

   The black-and-gray background of the splash page for the performance artist Stelarc’s website appears to be an abstraction of memory blocks, logic boards, and input/output pads. Into it is plugged a block of small white introductory text, a blip of red text listing devices necessary to access the site, and a sketch showing a body wired with EEGs to catch the brainwaves, ECGs to trace the heartbeat, EMG’s to monitor the flexor muscles, and an array of contact microphones, position sensors, and kineto-angle transducers to chart everything else. In this integrated circuit, voltage-in probes the body; voltage-out extends it. In case the point is not yet clear, two neon-bright chunks of text in the middle of the page blink on and off to announce it: “THE BODY IS,” the first lines read all in a rush, then slowly, spelling it out, “O-B-S-O-L-E-T-E.” In this paper, I would like to argue that the transformation from an organic, industrial society to the polymorphous information system Stelac enacts allows us to think back to machine-human collaborations overlooked in expressivist approaches to poetry.

   Audun Andreassen - 03.04.2013 - 16:02