Historical Examples of Electrified Humans in Performance

Artists,Reference — Robb Godshaw @ 3:48 am


I was lucky enough to encounter a super well written illustrated acedemic journal entitled Electric Body Manipulation as Performance Art: A Historical Perspective.

Here is my response. I recommend skimming the full text.

Quotes:

“…the human body as a display device for algorithms that run on digital computers”

ca. 1800 “Aldini, after having cut off the head of a dog, makes the current of a strong battery go through it: the mere contact triggers really terrible convulsions. The jaws open, the teeth chatter, the eyes roll in their sockets; and if reason did not stop the fired imagination, one would almost believe that the animal is suffering and alive again [42].”

Electronic Muscle Stimulation has a longer history in the arts than I had expected. The first nice example of Transcutaneous Electronic Muscle Stimulation(TEMS) was in the 1860’s. Lookit:
Screen Shot 2013-02-11 at 8.29.20 PM

This man’s smile is induce by electric current. It is fake.
Duchenne de Boulogne ~1860’s
What appears at first to be crude early scientific experimentation, takes on an artistic note.

One series of photographs about facial expression was deliberately made with “an old toothless man, with a thin face, whose features, without being absolutely ugly, approached ordinary triviality and whose facial expression was in perfect agreement with his inoffensive character and his limited intelligence” (Fig. 9). Duchenne explained: “I preferred this coarse face to one of noble, beautiful features . . . because I wanted to prove that, despite defects of shape and lack of plas tic beauty, every human face can become spiritually beautiful through the accurate rendering of emotions”

De Boulogne’s motivations were more complex than those of a straight bio-engineering researcher. His findings were published in Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine, which Charles Darwin drew on heavily for his research on emotional expressivity.

Screen Shot 2013-02-11 at 8.38.04 PM
Arthur Elsenaar
Mid-90’s facial control art

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