Today I bring you one example of how medical technology and body modification are converging.
The image above comes from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where they have engineered a new form of wheelchair mobility through the use of a tongue piercing. The Tongue Drive System uses a dental plate that captures the movement of the tongue piercing below, which is fashioned with a tiny magnet on top. more...
Recently I stumbled across this interview with Jacqui Moore, a rather well-known and visible member of the body modification community for her extensive black and grey full body suit. Bearing the rather exploitative tagline (which states “A respectable mother celebrated her divorce by asking her new boyfriend to cover her entire body – with a single TATTOO”), which makes her sound not only impulsive but pathological, what does this case reveal about contemporary body modification practices? What is the relationship between gender, patriarchy, and body modification? And what are the costs of using indigenous iconography and rituals in one’s body modification practices?
British performance artist Alice Newstead is gaining attention for her recent performance inside LUSH cosmetics in San Francisco. The performance has become part of an increasing vocal outcry over the sale of shark fin soup in California. The proposed bill, AB376, has passed the California assembly and now awaits a Senate vote. more...
Body modification, a growing practice and subculture that now spans the world, has made extensive gains in merging the body with technology. Stretched earlobes, facial tattooing, and dermal implants have become more conspicuous as of late in many urban locales, and it is no longer surprising to find people going to greater lengths to modify their bodies in sometimes unique and shocking ways. For more examples, spend some time on one of the most popular online body modification community websites, Body Modification Ezine.com. The site documents the diverse array of practices that members engage in to explore, test, stretch, and construct their bodies in new ways. (Warning: The content is not for the squeamish).
Particularly, I want to focus in on a few keen examples of the merging of body and technology, or as I call it, the new cyborg body. more...
This week in my grad seminar, we discussed new materialism, technology, and embodiment via Elvia Wilk’s Cluster Mag article on “How the feminist internet utopia failed, and we ended up with speculative realism,” and Julian Gill-Peterson’s blog post “We Are Not Cyborg Subjects, We Are Artisans.” Wilk’s article is about, in part, the way that posthumanism, as a concept and an area of academic study, shifted from 90s cyberfeminism to postmillennial new materialism/speculative realism. It’s also a feminist analysis of the expectation that our online selves accurately and truthfully represent our “real” fleshy bodies (as are manifest, for example, in the nymwars). Peterson’s post is about transgender embodiment; it uses a new materialist framework to argue that technology is not something mixed in with an already self-sufficient body (e.g., a cyborg), but a co-requisite of embodiment from the beginning. As Peterson argues, “all bodies are formed through technogenesis and the active participation of the body’s materiality in its continual becoming, its continual modification.” Things like games, toys, interaction with caregivers–all these things draw out and shape its bodies potentialities into a typically “human” body, one that, for example, knows how to use its opposable thumb, and has hand-eye coordination. Peterson’s point is that trans* embodiment isn’t more or less technologically mediated/assisted than regular embodiment–it’s just different technologies with a vastly different politics. The world has been materially, technologically, socially, epistemically, and politically organized to make bodies cis-gendered, so trans* embodiment requires working against the grain or bending the circuits of normative technogenesis.
Although this short documentary (full transcript here) feels more like a glorified advertisement for the video game “Deus Ex: Human Revolution,” it does raise some interesting issues we deal with regularly on this blog. more...
I have written before about the (new) cyborg body, mostly in the form of tattoos and body modification, but new technologies are pushing this trend further in the form of epidermal electronics. John Rogers and his research colleagues, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaigne have developed rubbery sheets of “elastometer” that mimic the mechanical properties of the human skin. This allows them to embed circuits and semiconductors into the material and apply it to the human skin much like one applies a temporary tattoo. Jon Cartwright reports that this material more...
Greetings cyborgs,
I came across this interesting video last week on BME Modblog. If you are unaware, the Nintendo 3DS now offers augmented reality video games. One gamer was so excited by this new technology, he got the AR card tattooed on his forearm to allow himself to become part of the game experience itself.
This exemplifies what Nathan and others have discussed on this blog many times. That is, the merging of the digital and the material and the creation of an augmented reality. So is the man in this video truly a “cyborg?” I believe so. In fact, we all are to a certain extent. Heck, you are reading this blog right now, engaging in a dialogue with me from far away through the help of internet technology. In this sense, the Nintendo DS AR card tattoo serves as an exemplary case of modification and the new cyborg body that I have spoken about before in this blog. more...
The Cyborgology blog is again sponsoring this year’s Theorizing the Web conference. Here’s the info:
On Twitter: @TtW_Conf & #TtW12.
On Facebook: Community Page & Event Page.
Keynote:
“Social Media and Social Movements”
Andy Carvin (NPR; @acarvin) with Zeynep Tufekci (UNC; @techsoc)
Deadline for Abstracts: February 5th
Registration Opens: February 1st
Several months ago, a British police chairman called for lifting the ban against tattoos on police officers. His argument was that tattoos serve as an “icebreaker” for dealing with the public. Now this is not a new argument, but it is the first time a public official has argued for the social benefits of tattooing. The change in perspective comes as a surprise, especially given the longstanding associations between tattoos and deviance.
