"Ian Haig: Brain Tumour Helmet with Microwaves"
2002-11-22 until 2002-12-19
Centre for Contemporary Photography
Fitzroy, VI, AU

This project explores the impact of microwaves and their role in producing brain tumors, as in technologies such as mobile phones. Consisting of two specially designed helmets fitted with speakers playing a sound-scape via radio receivers and a large video installation, made up of video monitors and an assortment of antennas. The project plays out the fictional scenario of perversely suggesting that brain tumors are possible to receive if one uses the helmets enough times at the right intensity.

'Brain tumor helmet with microwaves' explores the idea of contemporary body modification and post-human body mutation via brain tumors; in a perverse technological scenario that sees brain tumors and their effect on the brain as an unavoidable side effect of our everyday high exposure to microwave technologies. Current discourses in contemporary New Media Arts, on themes of the body, often view the body as an abstract entity, removed from the more immediate, banal and everyday engagement that our bodies have with technology, eg: the relationship we have with mobile phones on a daily basis.

Underpinning this new project is a wry commentary on the impact of microwave technologies, together with the accoutrements of classic sci-fi horror and the very real fear of the unknown effects of everyday technologies on our bodies. The objective of the work does not predictably seek to highlight the evils of microwave technologies in society, such as mobile phones. But to engage notions of technology, which is potentially transforming and modifying the structure of our bodies on a daily basis, in this case perversely through the brain tumor, as a catalyst of human/machine evolution/devolution.

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