Lawrence Lek, Prosthetic Aesthetics, (2012)
"Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times." Sigmund Freud
The body is in a constant change of aesthetic and biological evolution. Prosthetic Aesthetics is a research project to document the expressive possibilities of the body as a site for installation.
Our body has evolved to perform. How does technology affect the body, and how does this in turn affect architecture? What are the spatial capacities and boundaries when both body and environment are constantly in flux? Can an artificial extension, a prosthetic, be a catalyst for a new body type to emerge?
We challenge the extents of a body in space; through the application of artificial ‘clothing’ a human’s physical capabilities and architectural boundaries are modified. ‘Cushicle’ (Mike Webb), ‘Remote Control Dress’ (Hussein Chalayan), and the ‘Cheetah foot’ (Oscar Pistorius) are precedents of specific technologies and techniques that produce responsive, performative, and phenomenal effects. These garments can deliver generative surface methods for an architecture operated through the user. The research frames key parameters (cutting patterns, construction modules, programmatic applications, and operative field) and their respective characteristics and relationships. Thus, principles are derived and channeled with a conversion between digital and analogue modeling.Â
A successful prosthesis has a symbiotic relationship with its user, in which a both human and technological artefact come to rely on each other. Prosthetics can be mapped according to ‘technologies of the body’ that range from restorative (replacing lost functions), over- normalizing (imposing new social or aesthetic norms) to reconfiguring (changing the contextual relations) and enhancing (increasing functions or properties) aspects. Here, the research also investigates the potential of these dynamic models to address the shifting cultural and programmatic context of architecture.
Eadweard Muybridge’s Studies of Animal Human Locomotion revealed the kinetic performance of the human body through photography. Similarly, this thesis documents the potential of prosthetic surfaces that react to the body within a dynamic system as it runs, jumps, and tumbles. The combination of techniques, methods, and effects in clothing and sports prostheses are used to identify concepts for organization, structure and detailing of form. The potential of prosthetic surfaces is to push the human body - faster, further, and stronger. Like sports training apparatus, how can we test our endurance? Hone our agility? Increase our strength? As technology progresses, how will the body simultaneously evolve?
pixelskylines
jacobvanloon
kianamaiart
prguitarman
baratheonpilled
discoholicmusic
gummygunk
