Machine In The Ghost, Ctd.

Before my little hiatus I posted this video:



I called it entrancing, fascinating and prophetic and was disturbed by the way, from what I saw, it depicts a human body under the control of external electronic signals. But a few commentors have taken me to task, and added some interesting nuances.

According to one commentor, we’ve even been able to induce emotional states in animals through electrical stimulation -- the kind of human/technological integration in this video is nothing new. That's true, of course. For a long time we have had heart pacemakers, brain pacemakers, cochlear implants, and more recently brain implants that allow for control of things such as robotic arms and computer interfaces. (Here is an interesting 60 Minutes report that shows some of the state of the art)

But I do maintain that the fact that, to me, it looks like his face is seemingly taken over by the music is a bit creepy. (I should say here that some people on YouTube have wondered if the effect is even real. I think it is. Watch some of his other videos, here, and here. It doesn’t seem possible for someone to control his face to this degree.) Pacemakers, cochlear implants, these affect involuntary systems inside the body. People that are able to control a robotic chair by thinking (as in the 60 Minutes video) are still in control of what they are doing. My point here is that this artist has voluntarily given up control over his muscles and lets them do what they will in response to the music. The feeling is one of willing surrender to overwhelming forces. One way that I look at it is as a metaphor for a future where humanity starts giving in to technological forces that it doesn't fully understand.

Commentor Invisible Man, however, does make an interesting and more hopeful point: the artist composed the very music that is being used to drive the electrodes that contract his muscles. So, in this sense, the artist is still in ultimate control over everything and his face becomes his instrument. Conceptually it isn’t that different than a singer or a dancer. In this case the control is just roundabout and indirect, but he is still in ultimate control. What this artist is doing is, I think, both a disconcerting and a reassuringly human use of technology. It points in brand new directions of how we can express ourselves, directions in which our own biology is plastic and malleable. I can imagine lots of very weird, freaky variations on this example. What if someone were playing this music live and had someone else hooked up by electrodes. Imagine a music and dance troupe: Four people make up the band, and play music normally. But then there are two other people, one of whom is the instrument for the other. One person plays the other like a puppet, interpreting the music that the regular band plays! A completely new kind of human performance!

I think I just blew my own mind.