links


Two French performance artists, Marion Laval-Jeantet and Benoît Mangin, recently personified Haraway’s cyborg in a piece they call “May the Horse Live in Me.” The performance, which included a blood transfusion from a horse and walking on hoove-like stilts, attempts to represent the centaur myth.

more...

A "Fakebook" Sleeve

Just as we might have expected, the much-tweeted Facebook sleeve tattoo that I wrote about before has turned out to be a hoax. More specifically, it was a marketing campaign for the company Pretty Social. The company allows you to create custom handbags, stickers, and other products emblazoned with the profile pictures of your (digital) friends.

Nonetheless, the viral video itself made its way around the Internet, serving as but another case of tattoos as advertising. Much has been written on the topic already (Bengsston et. al 2005; McKelvey 1999; Kosut 2005), but I want to theorize further the use of tattooing in marketing as it relates to the phenomena of brand tattoos and lifestyle consumption and the repercussions these trends have for understandings of consumer culture. more...

Via Next Nature.

The always impressive Information is Beautiful created this graphic about technology and distraction. It is also currently featured at the MoMA exhibit Talk to Me.

See it big.

YouTube Preview Image

Recently I saw an episode of TLC’s “My Strange Addiction,” (lets not go into how exploitative this show is) and was first introduced to a man named Davecat. Davecat is a man with a synthetic partner, a growing trend where people marry anatomically correct, fully functional, mostly silicon, lifesize (sex) dolls. I call them sex dolls because they are clearly created in the image of a sexualized female ideal (small hips, large breasts, busty lips, flawless skin, long legs).

more...

Check out The Big Ideas podcast over at The Guardian UK today for a quick discussion of his work. The CBC has a very good article. Also, check out some Cyborgology posts on McLuhan, including his 1969 Playboy interview, Sheppard Fairey’s redesign ofThe Medium is the Message and perhaps most interesting is a website cataloging McLuhan’s video appearances.

How relevant is McLuhan today? In which disciplines? How about outside of academia?

more...

The orange represents the intensity of Flickr images taken and geotagged to a particular area. The blue is Twitter use. Looking at New York City above, we see that people tweet from different places than they photograph. For example, tourists photograph some areas while people tweet more from work and home.

More images after the jump. Viamore...

Nope.  It’s not a reference to some long-forgotten 80s movie.  On June 23, 2009, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates signed a memorandum creating US Cyber Command, a separate sub-command unit of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) headed by a four-star general, (currently, Gen. Keith B. Alexander). And, despite all its digital dualist rhetoric (exemplified by the rampant use of terms like “cyberspace” and “cyber-attackers”), Cyber Command should viewed as a major step toward the augmentation of warfare.  With the launch of Cyber Command, the US has quietly moved toward developing new first strike capacities that may, ultimately, prove more strategically important than even the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

While most media coverage has tended to focus on Cyber Command’s defensive postures (e.g., protecting classified data, securing the power grid, etc.), Cyber Command is also developing offensive capabilities to target and cripple other nations’ communication, transportation, and utility grids.  This demonstrates that, in the augmented warfare of the future, an effective assault on atoms will also require a simultaneous assault on bits.

Cyber Command’s capacities, however, are far from fully developed.  A recent report by the Government Accountability Office concluded that the Cyber Command “has not fully defined long-term mission requirements and desired capabilities to guide the services’ efforts to recruit, train and provide forces with appropriate skill sets.”

Watch CBS sensationalize cyber-warfare and make the digital dualist fallacy of comparing cyberspace to land and sea.

YouTube Preview Image

I already wrote on augmented reality tattoos once before, so I will keep it brief. This video shows a client receiving a QR code tattoo, which then links to Youtube and plays a little cartoon of a singing man. Now, although the artist is off in proclaiming it as the “first ever” of its kind, it once again highlights a growing trend in the body modification community. Not only does the fusing of technology and the body create unique cyborg bodies, it also reveals the importance of such new technologies for the expression of our selves and identities. For instance, will people begin tattooing QR codes on themselves that link to their personal blogs and Facebook accounts? This would make a very interesting case of self-branding!

Another trend I have observed in my own research on tattooing is the role of the prosumer. This video shows the tattoo artist K.A.R.L. livestreaming his tattoo appointment online, communicating with observers in a chatroom format while tattooing his client. Now this is nothing new. In fact, some of my close friends have been doing this for years and I myself have been tattooed in front of an internet audience several times. But what makes this example interesting is the fact that the internet audience, as a body of prosumers, helped K.A.R.L. determine the tattoo design itself. This is unheard of. I have yet to see tattooers take such a “crowd-sourcing” approach to their work.

But this video does speak to the importance of Web 2.0 to contemporary tattoo fame. In a media-saturated environment, tattoo artists now must aggressively market themselves online through SNS like Facebook and Myspace, and through livestreaming tattoo events like this. At a time when tattoo collecting itself has become globalized (Irwin 2003), tattoo artists can no longer afford to become a “big fish in a small pond” as one tattoo artist told me. In order to survive in an increasingly media-saturated community, tattoo artists themselves must become hypervisible online, showcasing their work across several online avenues and building a client pool that spans several continents. Such is the nature of contemporary elite tattooing (Irwin 2003).

Via The Machine Starts.