Technoflesh installation at Babel as part of Metamorf 2024
TECHNOFLESH
Technoflesh is a metaphysical sci-fi experience by Unnur Andrea Einarsdottir and Panja Göbel. Exploring the blurred and hybrid relationship between our bodily reality and our digital counterparts, the artists were staging a participatory cult-like performance powered by the audience’s brain data. In an imagined sci-fi bio lab setting the audience was invited to reflect on the concept of human physicality and how avatars could be embedded in body remnants in a hyper digitised future.
Technoflesh installation at Babel 2024
Inspired by and building upon Stelarc’s ideology around the ‘techno body’ the artists position an apocalyptic artwork around the accelerationist future of nano technologies.
Talking about the idea of ‘techno flesh’ becoming the new landscape for machines Stelarc foresaw a future where.. “the body becomes connected with other bodies in other places
in a multiplicity of ways, a whole range of sensory antennae that the technology provides. In a sense the body becomes part of this greater operational structure,
where intelligence is distributed remotely and spatially over the Internet” (Stelarc 1995)
The project is a reflection on the consequences of Stelarc’s staged body hybridisation, during a time of hyper digitisation: the pandemic, live streamed wars and the metaverse becoming a capitalised virtual destination.
Unpacking what it could mean to have a log for the remains of a physical body within the digital world, the artists are staging the idea of future flesh being able to hold a history of its digital avatars.
Within the setting of a dystopian capitalist start-up participants are given the opportunity to engage in a hunger games like ritual win the avatars anchored in the flesh.
Technoflesh performance at Babel 2024
A brain headset is fitted on the participant feeding their personal brain data into an augmented reality app which maps the avatar on their face.
Left at the mercy of the brain computer interface the participant is forced to navigate the fragile hybrid place that connects them to their virtual replicant.
What role will the body as a physical structure play in a future that looks predominantly digital? Building on Stelarc’s vision of flesh to be redesigned and accelerated through technology,
the artists are casting a now not so impossible reality of ‘the body as a traceable site for the psyche or the spirit’ to interact with these ideas through the use of technology.
Technoflesh here proposes embedded technologies as a tool to access and communicate a person’s dreams in the form of their avatars.
The participant is being tasked to alter their brain waves to hold the soul of someone on their own face. Technology becomes a symbiotic component of flesh expressing real agency for the audience to witness.
The viewer is having to navigate the complex multi-layered issues of a technologized future where any person can be embodied by others.
Accelerationist Techbro dreams, body horror and surveillance sit side by side – as a running commentary on our lives.
Technoflesh installation at Babel 2024 This project was part of Meta.Morf 2024
[up]Loaded Bodies Trondheim Biennale for Art and Technology
Norway / The Netherlands
April 17 - October 13
Read Martin Palmer's accompanying exhibition text
Technoflesh performance at Babel 2024
a collaborative artwork between
Unnur Andrea Einarsdottir and Panja Göbel
for BABEL visningsrom for kunst
XR appdevelopment: Alex Brigden/Panja Göbel
Music, spoken word and soundscapes: Unnur Andrea Einarsdottir
Visuals and costumes: Panja Göbel
Technoflesh installation at Animal/Avatar/Machine Svavarsafn (Höfn, 2025)
