Oscar Pistorius

Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius was born 22 November 1986, and is a South African Sprint runner. People have named him "Blade Runner" and "the fastest man on no legs"

I have chosen to research Oscar as he has metal legs making him a cyborg. From this he is one of the best runners and people say he has an unfair advantage as he has 'a machine' helping him run. I don't feel it is unfair, as I feel its extordinary that a person can get on so well with a robotic leg, making them a cyborg put together.

Although him and his legs are really I may use this kind of technique in my own work, 'springy legs'. This will help me to get the cyborg affect that I am after.

My Ideas

I have decided that I want to look into sport and sports people for my theme for this brief. For my concept I have decided to look into the idea that professionals in sport such as basketball, football, rugby, ect... that once they get paid for what they do, they have to train up like 'machines'. They can't afford to make mistakes, in which case their not 'human' anymore.
I will start by getting images from magazines of people playing sport and cut and paste robotic arms on them to make a photomontage.
I will then develop this by getting images from the internet of people playing sport and then incorporate cogs and wires on to their arms and legs. I will do this through the process of photoshop.
To finish up I will take my own images of sports and machines and then incorporate them with the same process of photoshop.

Turn Me On ft. Nicki Minaj & David Guetta

Here is a music video I saw on the box channel, and noticed it has about robots in humans, so I decided to research it further.

Here is the first clip I have chosen as you can see clearly the metal in the mechanic face. I like all the cogs and wires that you see under the skin. This is something I will consider when doing my own interpretation of cyborgs.

Here is the full music video of turn me on, by nicki minaj & David Guetta, I have put this on as it has been a great inspiration to me, helping me find a starting point for my own work.

Terminator

For my search I watched the film terminator and that has a lot of robots in it as its supposed to be set in the future.

Here is a photograph as a shot from the film. It saws a robot inside a mans body, I like the way its just one side of the face that is burnt away, giving us a really good feel that its a cyborg. This is something that I would like to look into for my own work, as I feel it looks more realistic rather than comical.
This process will have to be done on either photoshop of light room and I will have to start practising now if I want to use this in my development, maybe even final product.

Raoul Hausmann

I decided I needed more artist research to help me find my own path in the cyborg brief and I came across Raoul Hausmann.

From looking at his work, it is far from my own style of working. But that is why I picked him to research. I want to keep my options open, also I feel his style of working would be a good place to start. It is very abstract and comic book style.

 As you can see in this photographs there is a lot of cut and paste in people and objects. This gives a very strange and unrealistic feel when looking at his images. He experimented with techniques such as photomontage, painting, fashion design, poet and publisher. 

Raoul Hausmanns photomontages were very artistic in the early periods of Dada, this demonstrates how free his personality is.  Hausmann once quoted that his work is more engineer rather than an artistic which I can kind of see myself.  


I'm glad I research Raoul Hausmann as his style will help me with my own starting point for this brief.

Stelarc

After looking into what a 'cyborg' means, I decided to do some artist research. So I came across Stelarc from doing some internet research and found this photograph.

The Man with the Ear-Arm

This photograph made me feel really uncomfortable when I first seen it. I didn't understand why there was an ear on his arm, so I researched in to this to find out more.

"I replied that it has to do with ideas about how the body is not located where it's located anymore; that in this wild world of instantaneous reproduction and projection and distribution, we are located in several places at once."
Jen Graves. (2009). Stelarc: The Man with the Ear-Arm. In/Visible. 11 (1), p2

Basicly Stelarc focuses on extending the capabilities of the human body with both technical and physical manners. His ideas came from the notion that the human body is obsolete.

Third Arm

Here is Stelarc himself with his robotic arm that he made. His theory is that our bodies are already just extensions of our mind, so adding technology to our bodies is a logical next step.
To me this makes sense, he is showing the fact that technology is moving forward. There is no stopping it so we might as well follow it and join the path with everyone else.


“Bodies are both Zombies and Cyborgs. We have never had a mind of our own and we often perform involuntary conditioned and externally prompted. Ever since we evolved as hominids and developed bipedal locomotion, two limbs became manipulators and we constructed artifacts, instruments and machines. In other words, we have always been coupled with our technology. We have always been prosthetic bodies. We fear the involuntary and we are becoming increasingly involuntary and extended. But we fear what we have always been and what we have already become - Zombies and Cyborgs.”
Stelarc. (2008). Stelarc Third Arm Helps Improve Your Ski-Boxing. Available: http://www.electronicsinfoline.com/News_Gadgets/Robotics/stelarc-third-arm-helps-improve-your-ski-boxing.html. Last accessed 18th Feb 2012.


Here is a quote I found from Stelarc himself. This quote to me means that the zombie is our past, and cyborgs is our future, in which creates us as we are now. We are becoming more and more like cyborgs however we will still have our zombie human side to us.

The Eyeborg Documentary (youtube)

I watched this documentary to help give me some ideas for my own work.

Metamorphosis

After reading the book Metamorphosis, I was lost for words. I found it really hard to understand and get my head around what it was about.


Basicly its about a boy who turns in to a bug. He can't move from his bed and looses his appetite. His family all get sick of him as he can't work any more from this illness, and the family become poor.
I feel that the story isn't really about him becoming a bug, as at the beginning it mentions "He becomes miserable and reflects upon his life as a travelling salesman and how fed up of it he is and he would happily quit the job if he didn't have to provide for his parents and sister. "
This to me is more about him and his job and how he doesn't want to work there anymore but feels he has to for the families sake, from this he becomes mentally ill.


Dictionary Definition

MET·A·MOR·PHO·SIS

1. Biology . a profound change in form from one stage to the next in the life history of an organism, as from the caterpillar to the pupa andfrom the pupa to the adult butterfly.

2.a complete change of form, structure, or substance, as transformation by magic or witchcraft.

3.any complete change in appearance, character, circumstances, etc.

4.a form resulting from any such change.

5.Pathology . 

a type of alteration or degeneration in which tissues are changed: fatty metamorphosis of the liver.

I found the dictionary definitions to see if it would help me understand what the book was about. And yes it is about a change in an organism.

So how does this relate to my brief of cyborgs? I think it is to do with the change in people, whether its a physical change or metal change. This could even be due to technology, i.e from the equipment at his work, or a tv program on bugs. I am still unsure of what this book is about, but I feel I have a bit of an idea and I'm hoping that I will understand it after doing more work on cyborgs.

Definition of Cyborg

A cyborg, short for "cybernetic organism", is a being with both biological and artificial (e.g. electronic, mechanical or robotic) parts.

The term cyborg is often today applied to an organism that has enhanced abilities due to technology, though this perhaps oversimplifies the necessity of feedback for regulating the subsystem. 

Fictional cyborgs are portrayed as a synthesis of organic and synthetic parts, and frequently pose the question of difference between human and machine as one concerned with morality, free will, and empathy. Fictional cyborgs may be represented as visibly mechanical (e.g. Doctor Who) or as almost indistinguishable from humans (e.g. Terminator films) 

Basicly to me a cyborg is man and machine. This could be something simple like a person with a mobile phone or a person in a wheel chair. Cyborgs are all around us, technology is getting better and better meaning soon to come they will be everywhere.

Introduction

The new brief for this unit is 'Cyborg'.  This will introduce the main techniques of photographic manipulation and will give a broad overview of popular photo editing software such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom.  It will provide an introduction to essential skills in respect to image composition, manipulation and retouching. 


Requirements
Consider the idea of the Cyborg through the production of an A3 digital composite. 
The image must use two or more originals which must be at least one or more of a human body and one or more of an image of technology.  
I must have a clear standpoint so this could be Utopian as a human constantly developing and improving or dystopian in a culture where body parts are increasingly understood as commodities.