The man with an ear to the future

Published on Monday 13 April 2009 22:08

AN EAR-SHAPED growth sprouts from his forearm, intended to allow people across the world to listen to what it "hears".

The "ear" has grown to become a permanent part of Australian performance artist Stelarc's body in his latest – and most extreme – venture.

And despite invoking reactions that range from shocked revulsion to disbelief, Stelarc could be giving people a "glimpse of the future", say Scottish scientists.

The 62-year-old, whose real name is Stelios Arcadiou, is in Scotland for the Edinburgh International Science Festival.

When complete, his third "ear" will be kitted out with a microphone, and when he is in wi-fi-enabled areas, people will be able to log on to the internet and listen to what it is "hearing".

It will also be Bluetooth enabled, allowing people to call the "ear", with their voices coming out of Stelarc's mouth, thanks to a small receiver and speaker attached to his tooth.

"If I tried to lip-synch them, it would sound like a badly dubbed foreign movie," said Stelarc, who has a trademark horror-film laugh.

Dr Michael Smyth, a computer scientist from the Centre for Interaction Design at Napier University, Edinburgh, which arranged Stelarc's visit, said that although his method was extreme, it could show the future direction of communication.

"Stelarc has been at the forefront of looking at the relationship between the body and technology," he said. "Maybe we are getting a glimpse of the future here, where technologies get embedded.

"We all carry mobile phones everywhere but suddenly when we break the barrier of the skin, it becomes an issue.

"However, artificial hips have been around for years."

He suggested there could be a time when credit card details were also embedded under the skin so that people would not need to carry them around.

Stelarc's mission to have a third ear began 12 years ago and has involved several surgical procedures. An artificial "scaffold" was inserted under his skin, and his skin cells grew into the substance, so it became part of his body.

"It's literally a part of my arm, and it has its own blood supply," he said.

An earlobe has still to be added, which will be grown from Stelarc's stem cells.

Originally, the ear was going to be attached to the side of his face, but he realised it would wiggle every time he spoke. Stelarc told The Scotsman he was interested in engineering devices, "so we don't have to carry around bits of technology – so the body itself becomes the medium of reception and transmission".

And he said the ear was a way of "visualising the possibility of radically modifying the human body and electronically augmenting it."

His previous projects, which have all involved augmenting the body, include building a third hand and creating an exoskeleton that he said turned him into a "technological chimera".

Stelarc will give a talk entitled Alternate Anatomical Architectures: Fractal Flesh, Chimeras and Extra Ears as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival tonight. He will also be part of a debate called Bodies of the Future tomorrow.