The Cyborg Experiments: The Extensions of the Body in the Media Age
The Cyborg Experiments: The Extensions of the Body in the Media Age
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机器人实验：媒体时代身体的延伸
DOI：
10.1093/bjaesthetics/44.1.106
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发表时间：
2004
影响因子：
0.8
通讯作者：
H. Kennedy
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
H. Kennedy
106书评每一章都使用不同的理论视角来解释或理解奥兰和斯泰拉克行为艺术的意义，这两位艺术家都被描述为拥抱化身的电子人本质的艺术家。乔安娜·齐林斯卡在导言中将这些文章置于越来越多的文学作品中，这些文学作品将自己描述为“机器人学”--一种专注于研究艺术、文学和流行文化中“亲密的人-机关系”的话语，但也是一组活的经验(第3页)。齐林斯卡将这些藏品描述为寻求发展麦克卢汉提供的见解，以进一步扩大他对技术的理解，将其视为“人类的延伸”。半机械人和半机械人化身的形象既不是反乌托邦(甚至也不是乌托邦)未来的象征，也不是警告，而是作为一个具有多种可能性和多重解读的场所。对于大多数作者来说，半机械人的形象提醒我们，人类和技术是绝对不可分割的。这种情况并不是以某种方式被认为是“新的”--正是机器人日益增长的可见性迫使我们重新思考亚里士多德的模型或对技术的理解，在这些模型或理解中，它们被认为是人类“使用的工具”。正是马克·波斯特对人类与技术之间关系的主流理解的批判，开启了这部作品集的第一部分：《电子人链接》。波斯特的文章《高科技科学怪人，或海德格尔遇到斯泰勒克》详细阐述了他想要从海德格尔那里提取的东西，这些东西对“当机械和信息机器与人体结合时，技术概念会发生什么”的研究长期有用(第15页)。在这张海报中，海德格尔重点讲述了海德格尔对机器在我们文化中的重要性的敏感，而不是他对技术的悲观预测，将其称为“堕落”。海德格尔的洞察力被用来与对技术和机器作为推动人类进步的工具的理解形成对比。海德格尔坚持将技术嵌入到我们对我们作为人或“我们的存在的概念”的理解中，这是波斯特文章的核心。在这里，技术不仅仅是物体，而且是我们的社交世界被‘建立’或‘产生’的方式的一部分(第20页)。然而，这一框架在StelArc工作中的应用只是非常短暂的，因此，这篇文章的总体目标是上演一场“最杰出的技术哲学家和最勇敢的人类探险家之间的相遇”(第17页)，感觉不完整，令人沮丧地有限。第一部分的其他文章借鉴了一系列不同的哲学框架，通过这些框架来探索斯泰拉克和奥兰的作品。Julie Clarke的文章《The Human/Not Human in the Work of Orlan and Stelarc.》将这两位艺术家的作品与过去和最近的半机械人化身的表现进行了比较，如弗兰肯斯坦的怪物、《星际迷航》的博格和尼尔·斯蒂芬森的希罗主人公。对克拉克来说，这些都是有限的存在，他们处于‘介于两者之间’的状态是一种不可思议的半影……也许..。描述了二十一世纪初的人类状况“(第53页)。梅雷迪斯·琼斯和佐伊·索菲亚的散文《中世纪的斯泰拉克和奥兰》将他们的表演定位为对身体的早期前现代理解的回归。尽管承认两位表演者都不信教，但作者认为，通过将自己定位为准备在集体世俗理想(无论是艺术、美还是技术进化)的批评中遭受身体痛苦的人，他们可以与自愿遭受…痛苦的中世纪神秘主义者并驾齐驱。
106 BOOK REVIEWS each chapter uses different theoretical perspectives in order to interpret or understand the significance of the performance art of Orlan and Stelarc, both described as artists who embrace the cyborgian nature of embodiment. Joanna Zylinska’s introduction contextualizes these essays within a growing body of literature which describes itself as ‘cyborgology’—a discourse that focuses on the study of ‘intimate human–machine relationships’ in art, literature, and popular culture but also as a lived set of experiences (p. 3). Zylinska describes the collection as seeking to develop the insights offered by McLuhan, to extend his understanding of technology as ‘extensions of man’still further. The figure of the cyborg and cyborgian embodiment is not set up as either a signifier of, or a warning of, a dystopian (nor even utopian) future but as a site of multiple possibilities and multiple readings. For the majority of the authors the figure of the cyborg reminds us of the absolute inseparability of humanity and technology. A situation which is not posited as somehow ‘new’—it is the increasing visibility of the cyborg that forces us to rethink Aristotelian models or understandings of technology where they figure as ‘tools’ that humanity ‘uses’. It is Mark Poster’s critique of dominant understandings of the relationship between humanity and technology that opens Part One of the collection:‘Cyborg Links’. Poster’s essay ‘High-Tech Frankenstein, or Heidegger Meets Stelarc’offers a detailed working through of what he wants to extract from Heidegger as enduringly useful for the study of ‘what happens to the concept of technology when mechanical and information machines are combined with the human body’(p. 15). In this Poster focuses on Heidegger’s sensitivity to the importance of machines in our culture rather than his gloomy prognoses of technology as ‘the fall’. Heidegger’s insights are used to contrast with understandings of technology and machines as tools that enable the progress of humanity. Heidegger’s insistence on the embeddedness of technology in our understandings of ourselves as human or ‘our concept of Being’is central to Poster’s essay. Here ‘technology is no mere object but is part of the way in which our social world is ‘set up’or ‘brought forth’’(p. 20). However, the application of this framework to the work of Stelarc is only very brief and thus the overall aim of the essay of staging an encounter ‘between the most brilliant philosopher of technology and the most daring explorer of the humachine’(p. 17) feels incomplete and frustratingly limited. The other essays in Part One draw from a heterogeneous range of philosophical frameworks through which to explore the work of Stelarc and Orlan. Julie Clarke’s essay ‘The Human/Not Human in the Work of Orlan and Stelarc’compares the work of the two artists to both past and more recent representations of cyborgian embodiment such as Frankenstein’s monster, Star Trek’s Borg, and Neal Stephenson’s Hiro Protagonist. For Clarke, these are all liminal beings whose ‘state of being ‘betwixt and between’is the uncanny penumbra that... perhaps... describes the state of humanity at the beginning of the twenty-first century’(p. 53). Meredith Jones and Zoe Sofia’s essay ‘Stelarc and Orlan in the Middle Ages’ locates their performances as a return to an earlier pre-modern understanding of the body. Although acknowledging that neither performer is religious the authors argue that by placing themselves as the ones prepared to suffer bodily in their critiques of collective secular ideals (whether of art, beauty, or technoevolution), they can be positioned alongside mystics of the Middle Ages who voluntarily suffered …