For those that didn’t see the links on boingboing yesterday, Quinn posted her slides from the talk, and there’s also a video of it that you can watch. The slides are probably old news for anyone that’s been around BME for a while, but the video of the talk is very interesting and while it covers functional modification (Quinn also has magnetic implants), I found her comments on cutting and other things in that realm very insightful.
BME/News and Modblog highlight only a small fraction of what
The “Body Hacking” term is very interesting..
Body Hacking is a term that originated with Lukas Zpira.
I wonder how he said it in french. Can’t even find a translation at the top of my mind. I wouldn’t mind reading his manifesto.
Hmm. In German, “getting hacked” was a common expression for “getting tattooed” long before Mr. Zpira was around.
I’m developing the Hactivisim theme into a major part of my PhD thesis… watch this space!
Some very interesting ideas on the slideshow that I would like to hear more about.
Oh this is cool! Im supposed to do this project for my school surrounding cultural body ritual, so its nice to see something like this.
What a fantastic talk! It’s great to see such issues tackled in wider arenas and not kept to underground circles. Looking forward to more academic work in the future taking the primitivism and ritualisation out of modification. As Quinn says, it’s functionality that’s going to be what more people are after, not just mods for beautification.
I really enjoyed this. She discussed a lot of the stuff that I have been going through with my parents lately concerning my evolution in body mods. The main issue concerning enhancement towards the social “norm” vs. away from it really spoke to me. My mom was yelling at me saying something about “Why would you want to make yourself ugly” and something about putting my foot where my nose should be and vice versa. Personally that doesn’t make any sense because my nose wouldn’t work too well inside of my shoe and I would get tired of staring at my foot all day, but if that was something that would make someone happy to get then I would not judge them. I feel that it all boils down to one thing. “Socially acceptable” mods (while they are more dangerous and much more invasive) are so acceptable because they make the individual more acceptable with the rest of society. They make the individual fit in and apparently that is all that matters in our modern world. The mods that move an individual away from this “norm” do nothing more than make the individual more happy with them self. In a world that is so obsessed with suffering this happiness and satisfaction in oneself is wrong. I pity my parents. They would rather that I be unhappy with myself and fit in than finally be happy with or without the artificial acceptance of a race that I no longer want to be a part of, that has been judging and condemning me for so long. So I say fuck you and farewell for good to the “norms” and bullshit that has been suppressing free thought and individuality for too long. I have not been me for far too long and I am ready to move towards my true self.
hmm, what program do you need to play this file? *looks longingly at stubborn already downloaded, unplayable file*
iTunes works
hmm, i think i may be the last person in the world to not have an iPod/iTunes 🙁
sweet, downloaded the iTunes, t’anks!
I don’t have an ipod either, but I have itunes for the radio.
I really enjoyed the video but wish she had not laughed so much throughout it. It gave me the feeling that she was uncomfortable talking about parts of it.
Thanks for the feedback, I’m working on evolving this talk, and I appreciate getting comments back. If you spot a mistake, please let me know.
As for the laughing, it was my first time doing any public speaking in a few years, so I was a bit nervous. I feel I did much better at Etech, but no one posted a video of that. Ah, well. Next time.
For me the term “Body Hacking” came out of the O’Reilly open source and hacking community (they have a series of hacks books) and out of my coverage of the security hacking community. It seemed like a good fit. I’m not surprised it’s come up elsewhere before. Reading the link above, Lukas Zpira’s definition seems spot on for what I’m working on.
I’m very grateful to Shannon, BME and the community for helping me along in my attempts to understand this field.
Quinn
she was obviously not embarresed by the subject matter. i think she was just uneasy talking in public to begin with.