By far my favorite reading this class and certainly this week was the Stelarc reading. While it was both because of delivery and content I want to in this instance focus on delivery.
Stelarc is incredibly matter of fact, the authority in which these facts are stated make you believe they are true, make you feel less adequate as a human, because it isn’t something we can change right now. Much like being mean about a sunburn is cruel because there is nothing one can do but wait for it to heal, its what it is at the moment. The use of BOLD words to highlight important phrases YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO, can not of course go unnoticed. What I think is most interesting is that what he was talking about is ever more relevant now than ever, but so too is his delivery.
I had the unfortunate decision to start with the Stelarc, because the next two readings were wordy and overly prosed, they held little meaning to today in content and I think the delivery mirrors that. The sensorium was impossible to get through, its the type of academic writing I loath the most. The world only cares for the now, we need to stop making art or engaging with art that is of the then, even to a large extent about the near then.
Stelarc is making work that ask questions we haven’t formed, it isn’t hidden behind literary prose and multisyllabic messes of sentences. Our aim as artist, as system builders and communicators of these things is to be as concise and to the point as possible. If we are to continue at speed, to augment instead of evolve, we must sprint treading nuance and subtlety under our spiked cleats