[-empyre-] influence

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

Stelarc has been a critical influence/inspiration for me, both in person
and online. His theoretical approaches to body and virtuality are astute,
and his merging of performance, digital and analog phenomenologies, and
network distributions is amazing. I think of his work as paradigmatic of
what might be achieved, by less 19th-century means (see my article on him
in Beehive), in another 20 years or so. I'm not saying that his work is
necessarily enlightened, and its politics are problematic (in the sense of
gender and control), but these issues aren't brought up nearly as clearly
with anyone else's work. Besides, he's carried on the notion of spectacle
from such performers as Laurie Anderson, Beuys, Dennis Oppenheim, Vito
Acconci, etc., in a rather marvelous way.

- Alan (asked to elaborate on a much shorter answer)