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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
The Body is a Big Place
Helen Pynor,
Peta Clancy
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_The Body is a Big Place_ explores organ transplantation and the ambiguous thresholds between life and death, revealing the process of death as an extended durational moment, rather than an event that occurs at a single moment in time. This bio-art work is a large-scale immersive installation comprising a five-channel video projection, a fully functioning bio-sculptural heart-perfusion system, an undulating aqueous soundscape and a single-channel video work.
_The Body is a Big Place_ re-enacted certain defining aspects of the human heart-transplant process. In two performances staged during the exhibition the heart perfusion device was used to reanimate a pair of fresh pig hearts to a beating state. Rather than sensationalizing these performative events, the artists sought to encourage empathic responses from viewers, activating the bodies of viewers by appealing to their somatic senses and fostering their identification with the hearts they were watching. This opened up the possibility of a deeper awareness and connection with viewers’ own interiors.
The work’s realization depended on engagement with the organ transplant community in Melbourne, who were performers in the work’s underwater video sequences. These were individuals who have gone through extraordinary experiences in the form of receiving, donating or standing closely by loved ones as they receive or posthumously donated human organs.
The work’s title refers to the capacity for parts of the body to traverse vast geographic, temporal and interpersonal distances during organ transplantation processes. The project was underscored by risk and uncertainty, mirroring the uncertainties at the heart of organ transplantation itself. Collaborative research within and between the new media arts and life sciences, by artists and scientists, informed the work’s development, which would not have been possible without great acts of generosity and leaps of faith on the part of all involved.
Links: www.thebodyisabigplace.com
_The Body is a Big Place_ re-enacted certain defining aspects of the human heart-transplant process. In two performances staged during the exhibition the heart perfusion device was used to reanimate a pair of fresh pig hearts to a beating state. Rather than sensationalizing these performative events, the artists sought to encourage empathic responses from viewers, activating the bodies of viewers by appealing to their somatic senses and fostering their identification with the hearts they were watching. This opened up the possibility of a deeper awareness and connection with viewers’ own interiors.
The work’s realization depended on engagement with the organ transplant community in Melbourne, who were performers in the work’s underwater video sequences. These were individuals who have gone through extraordinary experiences in the form of receiving, donating or standing closely by loved ones as they receive or posthumously donated human organs.
The work’s title refers to the capacity for parts of the body to traverse vast geographic, temporal and interpersonal distances during organ transplantation processes. The project was underscored by risk and uncertainty, mirroring the uncertainties at the heart of organ transplantation itself. Collaborative research within and between the new media arts and life sciences, by artists and scientists, informed the work’s development, which would not have been possible without great acts of generosity and leaps of faith on the part of all involved.
Links: www.thebodyisabigplace.com
Installation - Sound: Gail Priest www.gailpriest.net; Collaborating Cardiac Physiologists: Professor John Headrick and Dr Jason Peart, Heart Foundation Research Centre, Griffith University, Australia; Curator: Bec Dean, Co-Director, Performance Space, Sydney. Underwater footage - Director of Photography: Rob Hunter; Videographer: Pete West; Editor: Peter Barton; Colourist: Trish Cahill; Stills: Chris Hamilton. Pig hearts performance documentation - Videographer & Editor: Sam James; Sound: Gail Priest; Stills: Geordie Cargill.
Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts; Performance Space; SymbioticA, University of Western Australia; Leonardo Electronic Almanac; Besen Family Foundation; The Editors; Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, Monash University; Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney; Arts NSW; National Association of the Visual Arts; The Alfred Hospital; Transplant Australia–Victoria branch.
Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts; Performance Space; SymbioticA, University of Western Australia; Leonardo Electronic Almanac; Besen Family Foundation; The Editors; Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, Monash University; Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney; Arts NSW; National Association of the Visual Arts; The Alfred Hospital; Transplant Australia–Victoria branch.
**Peta Clancy** (AU) has been exploring the intersections of art and medicine and of art and science for more than a decade. Clancy is a lecturer in the Fine Arts Department, Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and was awarded the Dean’s Excellence in Research by an Early Career Researcher Award in 2011. Clancy’s practice includes installation, new media, video, performance, photography and sculpture.
**Helen Pynor** (AU) originally trained as a biologist majoring in cell and molecular biology before training as an artist at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. She explores themes from the life sciences in her artistic practice, focusing on perceptions and experiences of the interior body and taboos surrounding the exploration of the body’s interior. Pynor’s practice includes installation, new media, video, performance, photography and sculpture.
**Helen Pynor** (AU) originally trained as a biologist majoring in cell and molecular biology before training as an artist at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. She explores themes from the life sciences in her artistic practice, focusing on perceptions and experiences of the interior body and taboos surrounding the exploration of the body’s interior. Pynor’s practice includes installation, new media, video, performance, photography and sculpture.