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APPENDIX

Year
2011

Author
Laura Beloff

The author created a diverse body of work during the 2000s that explored the concept of networks + humans. These works were often wearable and interactive, examining the social dimensions of networks and the extension of the human subject as a node within a network. One example is Empty Space, a physical vacuum that functioned as a monument or memorial, allowing people to temporarily dedicate the space to the memory of something or someone they had lost.

Beloff also developed the figure of the Hybronaut, which conceptualised the human, technology, and network as a unified entity. This emerged partly as a response to the dominant approaches of the time, which tended to treat humans and technology as separate entities and focused on examining the relationship between the two. Rather than concentrating on the relationship between humans and technology in isolation, Beloff was more interested in how a human equipped with technology relates to and interacts with the wider world and environment.

The Appendix is a technological device in a form of a tail that is designed to become part of the user's physiological body. However the motoric movements of the tail are triggered and controlled by real world events that are external to the user; a combination of natural phenomenon and a human-constructed artificial system.

The horizontal direction of the tail movement is determined by the direction of the Helsinki city transport tramway in real time, and the vertical movements are triggered by the wave height of the Baltic Sea in real time. These connections were intentionally selected to have no purposeful intention or self-evident meaning for the user. Rather, it constructs a situation in which it is possible to investigate techno-organic connections that merge the user's body and the environment into a single entity. This kind of non-intentionality of the connections rejects the rational approach to technology as a purposeful tool, but treats technology as an environment and material. The Appendix-work presents an aesthetic experiment in which it is not known beforehand what the benefit is or what kind of experience it will create. Even though the structure of the work is based on technology, it purposely lacks an instrumental technological use as a means for achieving a predefined goal.

Central to the author's constructed Appendix tail is the relationships between: the body and technology, and the human and her surrounding environment. The latter two elements, human and environment, are increasingly enhanced by technological and artificially modified features and connections.