Stelarc: Antipodean Apparatus

You were thinking about how you never see robots in Australia, even though China has so many. JOLT has heard your prayers. 

With his upper body exoskeleton Stelarc becomes a simple sound generating system, composing the sounds of the performance by choreographing the movements of the six degree-of-freedom arms. The performance is neither wholly predetermined nor entirely improvised. Potentiometers at each joint continuously register angles, velocities and trajectories that translate arm motions into streams of data that trigger, modulate and spatialise the sound. The sounds generated influence subsequent movement, creating a recursive process in which action and perception continuously modify one another. The artist’s right leg is actuated by electrical muscle stimulation, performing involuntarily. The body becomes an augmented architecture whose gestures continuously remix, reshape, reconfigure and recompose the sonic relationships and structure. Amplified but off-balanced. 

James Hullick has built robotic sound machines that represent some other futurist pathway born from the industrial revolution: violins have never been so redivined. As separate acts, Hullick, and neurodiverse ensemble The Amplified Elephants, build anciently modern sound worlds from these creation-augmenting machines. There is beauty, wonder and brilliance, waiting for you to reach out. 

Presented by JOLT Arts