Hands-On

Internationally acclaimed performance artist Stelarc joins Flinders University Strategic Professor John Long in a discussion about hands, limbs, digits, evolution and technology.   

Stelarc is an Australian-based performance artist who engineers and experiments with body architectures, probing the physical limits of human experience. He has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally including in Asia, North America, South America and Europe. Since 1995 Stelarc has been recipient of three awards from the Australia Council for the Arts and has earned the Prix Ars Electronica Hybrid Art Prize, Austria (2010). He was appointed Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (1997). He has been a visiting artist in the Faculty of Art and Design, Ohio State University, Columbus (2002-2004); Principal Research Fellow and Visiting Professor in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit, The Nottingham Trent University, UK (2006); Senior Research Fellow and Visiting Artist at the MARCS Lab, University of Western Sydney, Australia (2006-2011); and Chair in Performance Art, School of Arts, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK (2006-2011).  More recently, Stelarc was Distinguished Research Fellow in the School of Design and Art, Curtin University (2013-2018) and has worked in collaboration with the Australian Industrial Transformation Institute, Flinders University for the 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. Stelarc holds an Honorary Degree of Laws from Monash University, Victoria (2000); and an Honorary Doctorate, Audio and Visual Arts from the Ionian University, Corfu.  www.stelarc.org

Professor John Long is a world-renowned palaeontologist, currently based at Flinders University. He researches the early stages of the modern vertebrate body plan from studying ancient fish fossils, and has collected fossils on expeditions throughout Australia, Antarctica and in many countries. Long has been the recipient of several major awards for popularising science through his books and writing and has featured in several documentary films and television features, including a profile by ‘Sixty Minutes’, Australia (2011). He was President of the world’s largest palaeontological society, the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology (2014-2016). In February 2020 he was awarded the $50K Bettison & James Award from the Adelaide Film Festival for lifetime achievement in science and science communication work.