Beware, it might get a bit smelly and weird. Dani Ploeger’s “B-hind” performance art installment uses a hacked anal probe to command a little household robot.
Call it what you will but a performance artist Dani Ploeger from the Netherlands claims he can control a robot using his sphincter. What is the sphincter you ask? The sphincter is the muscles inside of your butt which act as a valve to control the flow of partially digested food from the stomach to the small intestine.
B‒hind offers a unique Internet of Things (IoT) solution to fully integrate your sphincter muscle in everyday living. The revolutionary anal electrode-powered interface system replaces conventional hand and voice-based device interaction and enables advanced digital control rooted in the interiors of your body. Celebrating the abject and the grotesque, B‒hind facilitates simple, plug-and-play access to a holistic body experience in the age of networked society.
– V2 Lab For The Unstable Media
Ploeger states he was inspired by the art performance by a 1994 performance art by Stelarc, an artist whose work typically centered on the idea that human bodies are obsolete. Ploeger shares the same view about human bodies being obsolete and limited to performing tasks with exterior objects.
‘Artist Dani Ploeger felt disappointed by the limited ways to interact with his digital devices. The fact that he could only control his smart technologies with his fingers and voice meant that he experienced an increasing alienation from his body, its inconsistencies and excretions.’ – V2 Lab For The Unstable Media
Ploeger interest in art lies within the theory of transhumanism which is the belief that humans can reconfigure their genetic boundaries through science and technology. It is a very odd method and a bit repulsive in experimenting with your own sphincter but ambitiously artistic in figuring out body modification with cyborg/bionic mechanics. But is this the ideal road for human cyborg engineering?
In a 2011 performance called the Electrode, Ploeger experimented in probing the anal region and was able to produce interesting and bizarre sounds and convert it into electronic music. Below is a video to prove it.
In his 2020 art performance which is called the B-Hind. The B-Hind device is connected into his buttocks and is connected externally into a robot called the Keecker. The Keecker which has a BB-8 esque likeness is a household multimedia robot produced in France. Sadly the production lines had shut down in 2019. The BB-8 esque Keecker robot is a friendly household robot but seems to have now found a new purpose in the avant-garde butt art spectrum.
Below is the video performance which shows Ploeger demonstrating how the B-Hind works. The presentation does feel like it came out of a Black Mirror episode. The Keecker detects the muscles of Ploeger’s butt and from there Ploeger can command the functions of the Keecker. But in the presentation the Keecker is covered in streaks of Ploeger’s own possible poo. What did the Keecker ever do to Ploeger?? Are the signs of Ploeger’s defecation on a innocent household robot meant to say something? Maybe its just for the sake of art?
On the performance Ploeger recounted, “There was some unclarity and confusion. Some asked whether the product had left the prototyping phase yet, or how many had been sold already. An art collector bought one of the vacuum sealed electrodes with feces on it… A few people left cos they found it disgusting… Two people wanted to try it themselves after they saw the pitch.”
Futuristic? Infusing the human with technology
Ploeger isn’t the first person to confess the way he feels about his body being obsolete and limited in a technologic progressive society. We already live in a transhuman-techonlogical world within the medical world. For instance we have people using pacemakers for heart conditions. Technological innovators such as Elon Musk is pushing for transhumanism where the human race would improve in infusing our bodies with artificial intelligence.
One day we may become living Darth Vaders.
Back in 2017 Sydney bio-hacker Meow-Ludo Disco Gamma Meow-Meow implanted a chip in his wrist to catch public transport. The implanted chip was cut from a valid New South Wales public transport Opal card. Meow-Meow was charged by the authorities for not riding public transport with a valid ticket. Meow-Meow was fined He was fined $220 for breaching the Opal Card terms of use and was ordered to pay $1,000 in legal costs. But following a court overturning the conviction, Meow-Meow stated “cyborg justice has been served.”
Meow-Meow’s motives about possessing the Opal card implant in his wrist was to ”have frictionless interaction with technology.” I can’t say that much for Ploeger, especially if he needs to go to the toilet. Then again we can only imagine the worst when we think about that poor poo stained Keecker.
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