Escape Velocity

by Mark Dery

  32. Yablonsky, Robopaths, p. 7.

  33. Guy Trebay, “Machine Dreams: Survival Research Laboratories’ Heavy Metal,” Village Voice, May 24, 1988, p. 20.

  34. Calvin Ahlgren, “Robot Olympics Gets Down to Nuts and Bolts: Performance Artist Puts Iron Men on Display,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 10, 1989, p. 28.

  35. Harry Moss, “The Adventures of a Metalman: Robots Take Over the Palace,” The City, October 1990, p. 29.

  36. An early draft of Rex Everything’s “Negativland Presents the Rex Everything Guides, Vol. 1: Disneyland” (forthcoming from Concord, Calif.: Seeland Media) proved an invaluable, not to mention hilarious, resource in the writing of this section.

  37. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 136.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Samuel Haber, Efficiency and Uplift, quoted in Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), pp. 105-6.

  40. Feature article, Tri-City Labor Review (Rock Island, Ill., April 13, 1932), quoted in Ewen, Captains of Consciousness, p. 11.

  41. Quoted in Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller, “Hygiene, Cuisine and the Product World of Early Twentieth-Century America,” in Zone 6: Incorporations, ed. Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (New York: Zone, 1992), p. 504.

  42. Ewen, Captains of Consciousness, p. 19.

  43. Mike Kelley, “Mekanik Destruktiv Kommandoh: Survival Research Laboratories and Popular Spectacle,” Parkett, no. 22 (September 1989), p. 127.

  44. Ibid.

  45. Scott Bukatman, “There’s Always Tomorrowland: Disney and the Hypercinematic Experience,” October, no. 57 (summer 1991), pp. 63-64.

  46. Isaac Asimov, The Rest of the Robots (New York: Pyramid Books, 1964), p. 11.

  47. Frederik L. Schodt, Inside the Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics, and the Coming Robotopia (New York: Kodansha, 1988), p. 163.

  48. John G. Fuller, “Death By Robot,” Omni, March 1984, p. 102.

  49. Andrew Ross, Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits (New York: Verso, 1991), p. 95.

  50. Jon Palfreman and Doron Swade, The Dream Machine: Exploring the Computer Age (London: BBC Books, 1991), pp. 179-80.

  51. Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), pp. 47-48.

  52. Mark Pauline, “Technology and the Irrational,” in Ars Electronica /BandII / Virtuelle Welten, ed. Gottfried Hattinger, Morgan Russell, Christine Schopf, Peter Weibel (Linz, Austria: Ars Electronica Festival for Art, Technology and Society, 1990), p. 232.

  53. Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilization (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1994), p. 32.

  54. Quoted in Rex Everything, “Disneyland,” p. 115.

  55. Judith A. Adams, Amusement Park, p. 45.

  56. Jane Kuenz, “It’s a Small World After All: Disney and the Pleasures of Identification,” The World According to Disney / South Atlantic Quarterly ed. Susan Willis, vol. 92, no. 1 (winter 1993), p. 71.

  57. Adams, Amusement Park, p. 56.

  58. Mark Pauline, in the unpublished introduction to his press packet.

  Chapter 4

  1. Bruce Sterling, Crystal Express (New York: Ace Books, 1990), p. 25.

  2. Quoted from an archival videotape of Stelarc’s lecture “Remote Gestures / Obsolute Desires,” at the Kitchen Center for Video, Music, Dance, Performance, Film and Literature, New York, March 9, 1993.

  3. Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (New York: Bantam, 1967), p. 41.

  4. Stelarc, “Strategies and Trajectories,” Obsolete Body /Suspensions /Stelarc, ed. James D. Paffrath with Stelarc (Davis, Calif.: JP Publications, 1984), p. 76.

  5. J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, trans. Jack Sage, 2d ed. (New York: Dorset Press, 1971), p. 199.

  6. John Shirley, “SF Alternatives, Part One: Stelarc and the New Reality,” Science Fiction Eye 1, no. 2 (August 1987), pp. 57, 61.

  7. Ibid., p. 59.

  8. Stelarc, “Beyond the Body: Amplified Body, Laser Eyes & Third Hand,” undated essay accompanying a performance at the Yokohama International School in Japan, p. 28.

  9. Stelarc, press release for a performance of “Remote Gestures/Obsolete Desires: Event for Amplified Body, Involuntary Arm, and Third Hand” at the Kitchen, New York, March 12 and 13, 1993.

  10. Simon Bainbridge, “The Body Is Obsolete,” The Crack, no. 30 (December 1991), p. 75.

  11. Quoted in Linda Frye Burnham, “Performance Art in Southern California: An Overview,” in Performance Anthology: Sourcebook for a Decade of California Performance Art, ed. Carl E. Loeffler and Darlene Tong (San Francisco: Contemporary Arts Press, 1980), p. 399.

  12. Thomas McEvilley, “Redirecting the Gaze,” in Making Their Mark: Women Artists Move into the Mainstream, 1970-85, ed. Randy Rosen and Catherine C. Brawer (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989), p. 193.

  13. Quoted in Judith E. Stein, “Making Their Mark,” p. 134.

  14. Interviewed in Re/search 13: Angry Women (San Francisco: Re/Search, 1991), p. 77.

  15. Quoted in Paul McCarthy, “The Body Obsolete,” High Performance, no. 24 (1983), p. 18.

  16. “Playboy Interviewed: Marshall McLuhan,” March 1969, p. 74.

  17. McLuhan and Fiore, Medium Is the Massage, pp. 26-39.

  18. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet, 1964), p. 52.

  19. Ibid., p. 53.

  20. Stelarc, “Prosthetics, Robotics and Remote Existence: Postevolutionary Strategies,” Leonardo 24, no. 5 (1991), pp. 591, 594.

  21. Stelarc, “Redesigning the Human Body,” an essay delivered at the Stanford University conference on design, July 21-23, 1983.

  22. Stelarc, “Prosthetics, Robotics and Remote Existence,” p. 591.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Stelarc, “Redesigning the Body,” Whole Earth Review, summer 1989, p. 21.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Stelarc, “Prosthetics, Robotics and Remote Existence,” p. 594.

  27. Ibid., p. 593.

  28. Sterling, “Cicada Queen,” Crystal Express, p. 76.

  29. Stelarc, fax to the author, December 1, 1993.

  30. Stelarc, “Prosthetics, Robotics and Remote Existence,” p. 594.

  31. Stelarc, Kitchen videotape, March 9, 1993.

  32. “Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,” p. 66; Stelarc, “Prosthetics, Robotics and Remote Existence,” p. 594.

  33. Stelarc, “Prosthetics, Robotics and Remote Existence,” p. 594.

  34. McLuhan, Understanding Media, p. 56.

  35. Stelarc, “Prosthetics, Robotics and Remote Existence,” p. 593.

  36. Stelarc, “Redesigning the Body,” p. 21.

  37. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 136.

  38. Stelarc, “Prosthetics, Robotics and Remote Existence,” p. 594.

  39. All quotes in this paragraph are from Stelarc’s fax to the author, December 1, 1993.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Claudia Springer, “Sex, Memories, Angry Women,” Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture / South Atlantic Quarterly, ed. Mark Dery, vol. 92, no. 4, (fall 1993), p. 714.

  42. Stelarc, “The Myth of Information,” Obsolete Body /Suspensions /Stelarc, p. 24.

  43. Stelarc, “Detached Breath/Spinning Retina,” High Performance, nos. 41-42, (spring/summer 1988), p. 70.

  44. Kristine Ambrosia and Joseph Lanz, “Fakir Musafar Interview,” in Apocalypse Culture, ed. Adam Parfrey (New York: Amok Press, 1987), p. 111.

  45. Ibid., p. 114.

  46. Stelarc, “Triggering an Evolutionary Dialectic,” in Obsolete Body /Suspensions / Stelarc, p. 52; McLuhan, Understanding Media, p. 19.

  47. Obsolete Body /Suspensions /Stelarc, p. 71.

  48. “Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,” p. 59.

  49. McLuhan and Fiore, The Medium Is the Massag
e, pps. 63, 114.

  50. Stelarc, fax to the author, December 1, 1993.

  51. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred & the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1959), p. 207.

  52. Stelarc, “Prosthetics, Robotics and Remote Existence,” p. 591; Mircea Eliade, The Sacred & the Profane, pp. 118-19.

  53. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Noonday Press, 1972), p. 72. The italics are mine.

  54. Ibid.

  55. Ibid.

  56. Ibid.

  57. Interview with D. A. Therrien, “Man in the Machine,” Nomad, no. 4 (spring 1993), pp. 3-4.

  58. Arthur Kroker, Spasm: Virtual Reality, Android Music and Electric Flesh (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993), p. 113.

  59. Interview with D. A. Therrien, p. 8.

  60. Ibid., p. 7.

  61. Rossell Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft & Demonology (New York: Bonanza Books, 1981), pp. 57, 497, 509.

  62. Ibid., p. 135.

  63. Catholic 1993 Almanac (Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Corp., 1993), p. 313.

  64. J. G. Ballard, introduction to the French edition of Crash (New York: Vintage, 1985), pp. 1, 4-5.

  65. Ibid., p. 6.

  66. Andrew Sinclair, Francis Bacon: His Life & Violent Times (New York: Crown, 1993), p. 134.

  67. Ibid., p. 315.

  68. Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvelous Works of Nature and Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 115.

  69. Gavin Stamp, quoted in Arnold Pacey, The Culture of Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), p. 88.

  Chapter 5

  1. I owe the title of this chapter to a J. G. Ballard aphorism quoted in Re/Search 8/9: J. G. Ballard (San Francisco: Re/Search, 1984), p. 164.1 first explored the ideas that gave rise to this chapter in “Sex Machine, Machine Sex-Mechano-Eroticism and RoboCopulation,” Mondo 2000, no. 5 (1992), which was reprinted in Mondo 2000: A User’s Guide to the New Edge (New York: HarperPerennial, 1992).

  2. Marcel Jean, The History of Surrealist Painting (New York: Grove Press, 1960), p. 98.

  3. Marshall McLuhan, “Love-Goddess Assembly Line,” in The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 94.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid., p. 96.

  6. Ibid., p. 94.

  7. Ibid., p. 98.

  8. Ibid., p. 100.

  9. Cyborgasm press release, April 1993.

  10. Quoted by Simon Frith in Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock ‘n’ Roll (New York: Pantheon, 1981), p. 243.

  11. Chris Hudak, “Head from a Binaural Dummy: 3D-CD ‘Virtual Reality’ Erotica,” Mondo 2000, no. 11, p. 124.

  12. Rudy Rucker, Mind Tools: The Five Levels of Mathematical Reality (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), p. 287.

  13. Henry Adams, “The Dynamo and the Virgin,” in The Education of Henry Adams (New York: Vintage, 1990), p. 356.

  14. MacKnight Black, Machinery (New York: Horace Liveright, 1929), p. 15.

  15. Robert Short, Dada & Surrealism (Secaucus, N.J.: Chartwell Books, 1980), p. 27.

  16. Quoted in Short, Dada & Surrealism, p. 27.

  17. Tellingly, the painting makes a cameo appearance in William Gibson’s Neuromancer (New York, Ace, 1984) a novel in which a woman’s beauty is described in decidedly mechano-erotic terms, “the sweep of a flank defined with the functional elegance of a war plane’s fuselage,” p. 44.

  18. Stephen Bayley, Sex, Drink and Fast Cars (New York: Pantheon, 1986), p. 22.

  19. Ibid., p. 34.

  20. e. e. cummings, 700 Selected Poems (New York: Grove Press, 1959), p. 24.

  21. Quoted by James Mackintosh in “An Ode to Cyborgs,” Adbusters 2, no. 2 (summer/fall 1992), p. 12.

  22. Ibid, p. 13.

  23. J. G. Ballard, Crash (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973), p. 8.

  24. Jean Baudrillard, “Two Essays,” in Science-Fiction Studies 18, no. 55, part 3 (November 1991), p. 313.

  25. Ballard, Crash, p. 74.

  26. Ibid., pp. 99-100.

  27. Ibid., pp. 12, 41.

  28. Quoted in Re/Search 8/9, p. 157.

  29. Michael Crichton, Westworld (New York: Bantam, 1974), p. 66.

  30. John Cohen, Human Robots in Myth and Science (Cranbury, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1967), p. 66.

  31. K. W. Jeter, Dr. Adder (New York: Signet, 1984), pp. 169-70.

  32. Ibid., p. 172.

  33. Charles Bukowski, “The Fuck Machine,” in Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness (San Francisco: City Lights, 1977), p. 44.

  34. Ibid., p. 43.

  35. Ibid., p. 46.

  36. Ibid., p. 45.

  37. Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), pp. 164-65.

  38. Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” in Ecrits: A Selection (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), pp. 2-3.

  39. Sigmund Freud, “The ‘Uncanny,’” On Creativity and the Unconscious (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), p. 143; Jean Baudrillard, “The Orders of Simulacra,” Simulations, trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton, and Philip Beitch-man (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983), p. 153.

  40. Jean Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, The Future Eve, quoted by Raymond Bellour in “Ideal Hadaly,” in Close Encounters: Film, Feminism, and Science Fiction, ed. Constance Penley, Elisabeth Lyon, Lynn Spigel, and Janet Bergstrom (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. 111.

  41. Ibid., p. 110.

  42. Ibid., p. 115.

  43. Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Dell, 1984), p. 220.

  44. St. Jude, “Woman’s Home Companion,” Mondo 2000, no. 8 (1992), p. 43.

  45. Both messages were posted in WELL topic 281, “What Do Humans Really Want from their CYBORG LOVE SLAVES???” on August 8, 1992.

  46. Arthur Harkins, quoted in Whole Earth Review, no. 63 (summer 1989), p. 17.

  47. Gareth Branwyn, “Compu-Sex: Erotica for Cybernauts,” Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture /South Atlantic Quarterly, ed. Mark Dery, vol. 92, no. 4 (fall 1993), p. 786.

  48. Never Could Leave WELL Enough Alone (susanf), topic 265, “Text Sex,” in the WELL’s sex conference, July 15, 1992.

  49. Ibid., Victor Lukas (lukas), July 11, 1992.

  50. Ibid., Gareth Branwyn (gareth), July 13, 1992.

  51. Linda Hardesty, topic 299: “Sex in Virtual Communities,” in the WELL’s sex conference, September 24, 1992.

  52. Ibid., Afterhours (gail), September 25, 1992.

  53. Ibid., Attractive Nuisance (axon) aka Alan L. Chamberlain, September 25, 1992.

  54. Online Access, June 1993, p. 92.

  55. Frank Browning, The Culture of Desire: Paradox and Perversity in Gay Lives Today (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1993), p. 201.

  56. Tim Oren, in a private E-mail message to the author, August 17, 1993.

  57. Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1993), p. 150.

  58. Anne Balsamo, “Feminism for the Incurably Informed,” Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture /South Atlantic Quarterly, ed. Mark Dery, vol. 92, no. 4 (fall 1993), p. 695.

  59. Julian Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace,” Village Voice, December 21, 1993, p. 38.

  60. Jerod Pore (jerod23), topic 278, “Kiddie Porn, on America Online?” on the WELL, December 20, 1991.

  61. “Computer Porn,” Time, March 15, 1993, p. 22.

  62. Peter H. Lewis, “New Concerns Raised over a Computer Smut Study,” New York Times, July 16, 1995, National section, p. 22.

  63. Brock N. Meeks, CyberWire Dispatch, July 5, 1995. E-mailed to the author on the WELL.

  64. Tau Zero (tauzero), topic 299, “Sex in virtual communities,” on the WELL, March 6, 1993.

  65. Suzanne Stefanac, “Sex & the New Media,” New Media, April 199
3, p. 40.

  66. Jeff Milstead and Jude Milhon, “The Carpal Tunnel of Love: Virtual Sex with Mike Saenz,” Mondo 2000, no. 4, p. 143.

  67. “Cyberpunk,” Philip Elmer-Dewitt and David S. Jackson, Time, February 8, 1993, p. 64.

  68. Though popularized by Rheingold, the term “teledildonics” was coined by the computer visionary Ted Nelson.

  69. Howard Rheingold, Virtual Reality (New York: Summit Books, 1991), p. 346.

  70. Ibid.

  71. Pat Cadigan, Synners (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1991), p. 140.

  72. Lisa Palac, “The Sugar Daddy of Sexware,” Future Sex, no. 2, p. 26.

  73. Posted by Adam Peake in topic 19, “Dildonics II,” in the WELL’s Mondo 2000 conference, October 28, 1991; this was originally posted on the Internet newsgroup alt.cyberpunk, October 23, 1991, by Uutis Ankka on behalf of Pekka Tolonen.

  74. Ibid.

  75. Rheingold, Virtual Reality, p. 347.

  76. David Aaron Clark, “Test-Dicking the Force-Feedback Vagina with William Gibson,” Future Sex, no. 4, p. 24.

  77. Spiros Antonopulos and Andrea Barnett, “Brenda Laurel: Talking about That Very Chrome, Way-Dangerous, White-Man Interface,” bOING-bOING, no. 10, p. 12.

  78. Eric Hunting, fax to the author, November 12, 1993.

  79. Eric Hunting, “A Discussion of a Cyberporn Device,” posted by Paul Lenoue (palenoue), topic 19, Dildonics II, July 11, 1991.

  80. Mondo 2000: A User’s Guide to the New Edge (New York: HarperPerennial, 1992), p. 272.

  81. Quoted by Peggy Orenstein in “Get a Cyberlife,” Mother Jones, May/June 1991, p. 63.

  82. John Tierney, “Porn, the Low-Slung Engine of Progress,” New York Times, January 9, 1994, section 2, p. 18.

  83. Peter H. Lewis, “Multimedia (Especially the X-Rated) Stars at Comdex,” New York Times, November 21, 1993, p. 12F.

  84. Tierney, “Porn,” p. 18.

  85. Milstead and Milhon, “Carpal Tunnel of Love”, p. 145.

  86. Lawrence K. Altman, “At AIDS Talks, Science Confronts Daunting Maze,” New York Times, June 6, 1993, p. 20.

  87. “Aids Is Top Killer among Young Men,” New York Times, October 31, 1993, p. L19.

  88. Carys Bowen-Jones, “Hi-Tech Sex” Marie Claire, April 1993, p. 24.