u.s. security chiefs discuss potential action against iran the offer to saudi arabia claims terror all who is behind the recent bombing of its oil refineries. the global security body interpol says at least a dozen suspected terrorists have entered europe crossing the mediterranean. globe powell has failed to agree on a ceasefire the syria is open so russia and the us clash at the u.n. over how to deal with terrorists in the area. for the latest on all of those stories you can head to don't call me and stay with us for sophie and co next discussing body modification technology.

sophie shevardnadze for most of us implanting. into ourselves still sounds like something out of the science fiction but not for him i guess i guess believes that human bodies absolutely without modern technology i guess today performance artist stelarc. stelarc it's really great to have you on our show so your performers of performance art is actually blending biological body was to college and you're doing all kinds of exciting stuff for pushing the boundaries. i read you say on one hand the very exciting. on the other hand you know we should be careful so which one is it are you embrace in the future or does it frighten you. oh are annoyed the utopian road to start

been in my ideas i think. the problem with technology is how to manage it new technologies generate unexpected information new kinds of imaging possibilities so we always extend out sort of comprehension of the world what a body is how body operates what it means to be human. so for me technology is is generally a plus but i'm on this. just to really have your set more about you there's this inventor in cannabis called steve mann. so he is also experimenting with merging his body with machinery for quite a while now but he's more honest scientists say this side of it like to see it's doing it for sake of science no you you're an artist not

a scientist it's from what it what you do right now is it just a commentary to what's happening or is it also advancing science in a way well look you know i i am only an artist on the other hand i have a general knowledge of engineering of medical technologies because of my hands on experience with them. i see these projects as as 50. to new possibilities. ah i think that we shouldn't consider them in any why scientific research on the other hand usually my projects involve studies of the. technology so for example when my hand was 1st state engineer it was sophisticated enough even though i'm only an artist to be invited by the jet propulsion lab in pasadena. and the johnson space center

in houston. to demonstrate the hand to the extravehicular activity group. and not just only. there is an interest in. new technologies and sued around understanding of the body. i'm just trying to figure out where the general public is at at the moment in terms of understanding all of this because what steve mann and i know when he ran into trouble couple of times for instance when he was trying to pass metal that detector it was being seen like crazy and the customs officer got so scared that they literally have to sort of you know. some. mechanical things out of his body when it comes to you are do you think it a little too far out for most of the people at the moment or not really. oh i mean it's very difficult to evaluate you know i think. new ideas new

philosophies and contemporary practice often can only be value ites in the near future it will not be fully understood now. so for example it took 10 years to find 3 surgeons. and to get funding to begin the construction of an iraq. and the surgeons never really understood. that it was not a project during the 2nd surgery one surgeon was. sighing to the other to say. well you know if this is we must be the artists. and we're going to actually get here on your hand project and top through it and.

before i get that still want to talk a little bit about this facts of you know what is ation of human bodies what do you think this experimenting will have on lunch if it is i mean could that mechanical parts replacing biological body parts do you thing it could enable us to live forever i mean this is something that humanity has longed for throughout its existence it will i think the idea of. immortality for example i mean. in the near future this is not going to be possible having said that if we're going to be able to 3 d. print organs using living cells if we can grow. organs and parts of our body using stem cell technology if we can engineer prosthetic pots that can be components of the human body then we will have

a situation with we need not biologically dari. because we'll be eyeball to continuously reply 6 mel functioning parts of our body and actually if we can engineer an artificial womb that can bring to big. an embryo to a fetus to a healthy child then you'll rig's this students will begin without. because your body will already be external and it and you'll your life will end without biological death so had need to fall on human existence without birth without dish i had centrists i had not heard or read you saying that you just talked about reproductive organs right now were some fundamental tenets of our

existence may be revalidated with technology like the functioning of heart or reproductive organs that actually require you to be a man or a woman. i have 2 questions how exactly would that happen wake why how will technology remove the necessity of gender. the necessity of talking technically the necessity of gender and it's fascinating when you think about it and the all may come true what you're saying why would you want to do that why would you replace the heart that beats fire a why would you not want to be a man or a woman oh no i think i think with when i talk about the future all wife's talk about a contestable future a future 'd of contingency in other words a future of choice rather than of necessity with you know.

some institution or some government. under tight some eugenic kind of programs because what it means to be human is different for different people and it's a value judgement about enhancing your body are not so. convinced about trains humanism for example because there is the saw idea that. new technologies will improve their bodies now i think this. simplistic because an improvement of your body is a value judgement. an improvement to human not be an improvement for me because like this whole thing it's just in code it and humans in our species. does drive to change and replace things because apple speaking to martine. isn't very famous astrophysicist and he things that evolution is just going to turn us into

machines eventually you know since you know we're coming up with stuff that is more reliable and efficient than our biological south and sometimes i'm like are we really digging our own graves with this curiosity. may have perhaps sped up but i think what it means to be human is perhaps not to remind human their goal because as humans we're very curious creatures and we want to explore all the cons of possibilities of the cons of of bodies machine bodies other kinds of biological bodies on the i've always been interested in comparative anatomy so in evolution we see. different columns of bodies that perceive the world in different wise in other words one can argue that and then say it's an animal a human have different. you know different cartons of

worlds the experience you know we know that a dog only sees in black and white we know the bats navigate see notre sounds we know the dislike senses in for raid. these kinds of perceptual apparatus and different cons of biological and large bodies experience the world in very different wise and with many different generations the lifespan know. of of some creatures is only a diy. some creatures and live much longer than than humans for example. so i kind of speculate that a future body might be. a biological body that is increasingly machine eak and machines that are increasingly biological. and they'll be this

combination but that beats us an upgrade of the human race and we wouldn't just b.c. humans the way we know us will bots you know the idea of wanted is to be human is a historical and evolution recon struct you know so for example. when we will hominids and finally developed by people locomotion to do limbs become manipulators and we can construct ata facts instruments machines in other words by peta locomotion allowed us to completely chinese what it means to to develop as as a as a human body and you know even a couple of 100 years ago the idea that you would have internal components that would no longer

a biological. products would would have been inconceivable you know now it's acceptable that. and then petey might have an artificial om that is a carbon fiber operated by servo. connected to the users know the system so we accept this now. we accept the fact that the body that you are born with my not made the body that you die with. you might in the future have a transplant you might have an artificial. suddenly people will have out of joint. that's already happening so we still think the they human. but. this would not have been the case several 100 years ago we're going to take a short break right now when we're back we'll continue talking to perform and.

stay with us. exit from feel it's happening. big countries accumulate big positions and goal that's an exit for all. because we know that over the past 300 years no fia body has survived. israel's parliamentary elections to begin ended in deadlock feel after it is divided divided on the political right sitting prime minister benjamin netanyahu

says it's either my right wing blog or again back government how does this kind of rhetoric bode for the palestinians middle east ability. they all see themselves as dying swans in their dreams. but only one of the cells will ever make it to the top. they're ready to give their lives for the chance to die on stage if only once. not even broken wings the 2 of them. for generations with the memory of. ballet sweat and tears.

and we're back with stellar performance art is. your project the very famous one iran there are 1st of all can you show us through. the process of actually implanting that ear in your arm. and then connected it from what i understand it's still in a process. it was sort of related and have has been fraught with medical complications like i don't know from what i read the infection is. so dull choosing by getting really sick. because of outside interference your body's trying to tell you something i mean usually but is resist something when they understand that they don't need it would you know i mean to do in a. challenging and sometimes risky. and

we can't really generalise about this there was a serious infection. in the 2nd surgery when we planted a small microphone inside the econ struct and i had wires coming out of. and that didn't help because they were. in for about 10 days tasting the marker fine but effectively at the end of the 2nd surgery the surgeon even though we had a a mosque a surgical mosque on even though my arm was wrapped in bandages with a partial plus the cost of the surgeon could speak to the it is voice was picked up and while asleep transmissive so it's plausible and the idea. is still the intention is still to intimate tonight will the to electronically old men

to a so if you're in simply to moscow and i'm in london new york paris wherever i am wherever you are you'll be able to log in and listen to what my ear is hearing wherever you are wherever i am correct me if i'm wrong but that is an exact replica right it's a shape it's purely as static why would you go through that trouble every you could have just asked the surgeon to implant a chip that's a good question you know as an op to stymie interested in the all idea of. anatomical architecture is why do we have only 2 e is to ah is. too late 2 arms of the limbs so for example i've performed with a 3rd and an extended on. a virtual. and i was always intrigued about a making

a prosthetic pot of my body. using my own skin using my own cells so for example the process for constructing this was to implant a bio degradable scaffold which is poorest and when this is inserted beneath the skin when the skin is suctioned over the scaffold over a period of about 6 months you have to shoo in growth and vests killer as i should occurring in other words 'd the cells in your in your body grow into the scaffold it grows its own blood supply so now this is integrated as part of it's a living part of. the box what's interesting will be to intimidate the ear of this other project that you have rewired great mics basically out

of a sort of outsourced your body senses to others right to understand the concept. that from afar as long as we leave people who want to communicate and they do it through literature through i don't know painting then later on film photography of it is this how all this forms of expression will evolve into a people tapping directly into each other senses do you think it will come to that . it's not something that will happen definitely but it's plausible and it's possible i mean the rewind remakes performance for 5 days 6 hours every day i could only see with the odds of someone in london i could only hear with the ears of someone in new york but my body. and anyone could access my ride through the exoskeleton that i was wearing and remotely moves my body suffered

was this idea. you said of outsourcing my senses my visual an acoustical senses to people in other bodies and sharing my i see. people in other places were controlling the movements. so the idea of the distributed body of an extended mind this concept is really something that's already happening you know we all have wireless media we communicate remotely. i can see your face on my telephone that australia for it is there and when you physically experimented it's completely. the difference is that. you yourself are experiencing it in a more intense why. so there is that that difference but what i'm signing is that these actions these performances are in fact already

happening in some why or another. if you take that idea to the max like this whole intent interconnectedness right where people in theory connect to your feet and vice versa that really. you know grows into the whole species becoming one with each other isn't it that all these. gurus and people who were telling us all this time that we actually won all interconnected world in a kind of general sense. but what we're talking about here is. physically machine equally electronically being connected to each other. by choice. so for example you can switch on

switch off you can be on law and you can be offline. in fact now we share 2 columns of worlds we share on law and will sway way distributed interconnected and we still experience our flaws. with private biological individuals. and this is something that. is happening all the time and will continue to happen but even in very different whys so for example another possibility in the future is that all technology will be invisible because it will be inside your body with my current skyll. senses with nano robots. now body becomes the host for the technology technology now is existing external to the body but in the

future monte this. inside became broadway i see what you're describing knology that is in style inside of your body and you being connected to the internet is a witness inside of you more severe than any other physical or biological witness because i mean if i'm connected to internet anyone pretty much can and any point happen to me you know. i mean why would i want to i suppose myself so he decides from their ability well i mean hacking your body is all why it's possible. especially anyone with a chip in the body a simple chip is vulnerable to being hacked and as we have an artificial high as we have. or meant. to have brine then that's something that we have to manage but you know that kind of an argument

doesn't negate. experimenting with these things because you know if you want to just be a biological body then you will have no. machines to assist you you'll have no media devices to communicate with you will have no heating system still different if you know if i have media devices and internet is all around me i do that very often i choose to cut myself off completely because i know that there's no privacy now well you know if you talk on the phone if you go online everything you're doing is being watched and listened to but we still choose to you know to give up our privacy for the sake of facilitating facilitating our lives i feel like we'll ready are living in the internet and not having internet biology is exactly that choice then when i want to switch my ass off. i go off

but if i have it in me yeah but the problem is if you don't want to have it and someone forces you to have it that's a problem but people will choose to have chips implanted to have the cortical capacity expects spend to have an artificial have to keep a lawyer. so if we do into new laws and technologies if we have implanted chips or if we expand our cord and cool capacity or decide to have something like an artificial hearts now bodies to study a lot of. we still have to. engineer them saif and be eyeball to manage them in a why. people. intervene externally well that and also just to make sure that our bodies and brains and minds can cope with it

because most of the near a science. as i talk to you right now are saying that with the amount of information we have right now accessible to the internet we our brains are just going crazy because it's too much for it we're not custom made for the kind of information so if. if we're talking about you know having a chip in our hat constantly being upgraded and updated with information that does it mean that we're all going to be slightly insane in couple of generations. who will again i don't type good to start being view about that there might be advantages there's always some disadvantages it depends on. where the new technology is over rule of benefits and law i personally experiments i think suggests that how bodies can manage being. distributed being fragmented.

having additional limbs to perform with and i think that want to do is speculate about contestable few choose possibilities that can be experienced possibilities that can be evaluated sometimes appropriate to most likely discarded rebel or thank you so much for this wonderful interview and good luck with everything thank you very much thank you.

you know it's exit from feel it's happening. big countries accumulate big positions and goal that's an exit from. because we know that over the past 300 years no fear madiao survive.

i. want my dream of becoming a famous ballerina. still with the crown had a thing to say. just right now i really want to dance the part of twine and that cracker i love that's hard to watch. i've dreamed of being a prima ballerina since i was a child i'd like to dance a lot parts of course but i have no problem dancing in the court about hey i don't want other ballerinas to be jealous of me to the point of putting glass in my shoes they did that once to a damn.