sciencedaily.com: Everyday sadists take pleasure in others' pain

Date:

September 12, 2013

Source:

Association for Psychological Science

Summary:

Most of the time, we try to avoid inflicting pain on others -- when we do hurt someone, we typically experience guilt, remorse, or other feelings of distress. But for some, cruelty can be pleasurable, even exciting. According to new research, this kind of everyday sadism is real and more common than we might think.

e x p e r i m e n t : Ping Body - Stelarc, 2005

‘Pinging,’ a computer networking term for a signal sent by one computer to determine the presence of another, is made corporeal in Stelarc's Ping Body. A remote audience could access, view and actuate the body of the artist via the Internet. As illustrated in the schematic diagram below, a website provided an interface to a computer-based muscle-stimulation system that permitted those logged on to ‘ping’ various limbs with an electric signal, causing involuntary movements in the artist’s body.  This resulted in a haunting dance that recalled Balinese shadow puppets, made all the more dark by the loud electronic music generated live from network data. While the artist’s body became a robot controlled by the Internet, Stelarc retained control of the robotic third arm, introducing multiple levels of control and communication in the system.  By directly connecting the body to the Internet, it was also subject to the random ‘pinging’ that takes place when URLs are constantly queried by webcrawlers to determine their location and strength of signal. The body itself becomes the object of inspection in the network, rather than the subject that surfs the Web. By exposing and inverting a commonplace practice of the Internet, Stelarc demonstrates, in a highly visceral form, the physicality of online media an d the relationship between embodiment and disembodiment in computer networks. 

[1] Edward A. Shanken, Art and Electronic Media, 2009, p. 155.

---

http://www.artelectronicmedia.com/document/stelarc-ping-body

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stelarc#Performances

http://stelarc.org/media/pdf/Stelarc__Performances-Projects-Exhibitions-and-Presentations.pdf

BDSM, sex and relaxation: news and ideas · (c)Mem's digest

e x p e r i m e n t : Domestic Tension, 2007

Domestic Tension In May 2007 he began a 30-day-long project called Domestic Tension which involved him living in a gallery in Chicago, eating and drinking what was donated to him. Viewers of the piece on the internet were able to view or take shots at Bilal with a remote controlled paintball gun at any time of the day or night. Yellow paintballs were chosen because it is the color of the Support our troops ribbon.



Bilal first got the idea for Domestic Tension when his 21-year-old brother was killed by shrapnel in Najaf, and soon after his father died. The idea solidified after reading a news article about a U.S. soldier in Colorado who remotely fired missiles in Iraq. He originally considered calling the piece "Shoot an Iraqi," but decided that would be too incendiary. Still a book was released under the title "Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun". The book is a combination of an autobiography and his path towards approaching and completing the project.

The number of paintball shots greatly escalated after the work was reported on Digg.com. By the twentieth day, he had been shot at over 40,000 times, and hackers had programmed the gun to fire automatically.[2] By the end, more than 60,000 people from 130 countries shot at him. Bilal lived in the room from May 4 until June 4; afterwards the room remained on display, uncleaned, until June 16.

---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafaa_Bilal#Domestic_Tension
http://www.academia.edu/739023/Wafaa_Bilals_Domestic_Tension_A_politics_of_performance_in_gamic_space - 100p.
BDSM, sex and relaxation: news and ideas · (c)Mem's digest

e x p e r i m e n t : 'Rhythm 0' by Marina Abramović, 1974

To test the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Abramović developed one of her most challenging (and best-known) performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force which would act on her.

Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were a rose, a feather, honey, a whip, scissors, a scalpel, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions.

Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained passive) people began to act more aggressively. As Abramović described it later:

“What I learned was that... if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you.” ... “I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation.”