 |
|
|
|
|
"The Body Malleable marks the great divide that separates man from machine."
Chiara Marchini, Culture Wars, London, April 30th 2009
"This orgy of penile, vaginal and anal shapes was also strangely flattened and depersonalised, a cartoonesque celebration of the endlessly replicated surface of our primal priorities."
Sean Lowry, Broadsheet Vol.36 No.1, Adelaide, 2007
"Philip Brophy (...) channels basic instincts. The Body Malleable looks like a giant sex toy from the sci-fi classic Barbarella."
Tracey Clement, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, January 2nd 2007
"Philip Brophy’s The Body Malleable is the first work of media art to finally and emphatically tell it like it is: interacting with computers is a completely embodied experience."
Darren Tofts, Realtime No.63, Sydney, 2004
"It is refreshing that we are confronted here with questions of bioethics beyond that of the limits of our ability to fashion ourselves through plastic surgery (...). One piece in the nave of the church marks the great divide that separates man from machine. In The Body Malleable by Philip Brophy, the visitor is prompted to stick his finger into what looks like a large webcam, and thus perform an act of ‘digital penetration’. In reaction to the movement of the visitor’s finger inside this unfamiliar orifice, a computer generates orgasmic sounds and fluctuating anthropomorphic shapes on a screen. Under the great vaults of the former church the comical quality of Brophy’s truly profane contraption points to the fact that even man’s most basic act is about more than mere mechanics."
Chiara Marchini, Culture Wars, London, April 30th 2009
Link to complete online PDF review
Sean Lowry, Broadsheet Vol.36 No.1, Adelaide, 2007"Philip Brophy (...) channels basic instincts. His interactive installation The Body Malleable looks like a giant sex toy from the sci-fi classic Barbarella. In a darkened room, a white sphere with a blue rubber orifice exerts an irresistible pull. Stick your finger in the hole and wiggle: pulsating sounds and graphic symbols of ambiguous genitalia change to suit your particular fancies."
Tracey Clement, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, January 2nd 2007
"Philip Brophy’s The Body Malleable is the first work of media art to finally and emphatically tell it like it is: interacting with computers is a completely embodied experience. With its penetrative and very literal digital interface, The Body Malleable is an ironic and playful exploration of the human-computer interface that dares us to be squeamish (“The colon and its polysexual route to infinite Otherness beckons you”). The theme of the body malleable is a familiar one in Brophy’s work, only here the transformations of vaginal and penile forms and sounds are in the hand, or rather finger, of the beholder. The Body Malleable is the kind of work many people, including myself, have been waiting for at ACMI. It is striking and memorable, pushing the possibilities of interaction beyond the familiar point and click interface associated with computer-based works. It is welcome and important in that it extends ACMI’s curatorial history of presenting relatively safe and non-threatening work.
Whether we like it or not, we are required to physically relate to the work in a totally unprecedented, unfamiliar way: “You want to stick your finger in, but once you do, it gets messy.” The more rigorous your attack on the beautifully sculptural, yet organically ambiguous interface (is this a vagina or a colon I see before me?), the more suggestive and palpable the transformations on screen, and the more stimulated the surround sound becomes. But make no mistake, Brophy isn’t out to offend public taste, to shock or dramatically blot the contemporary arts map with a memorable success de scandale. It is the total indifference to either appeasing or transgressing aesthetic or moral codes that makes The Body Malleable stand out as an engaging and thoroughly worked over experience. When I went back to check it out prior to the closing of the show, that sphincter was well and truly spent. Another ruptured membrane in the 2004 experience. Spectacular."
Darren Tofts, Realtime No.63, Sydney, 2004
Complete contents of this page © Philip Brophy