I became enamored today with the work of Paul Clavé, who you can find at Timeless Tattoo in Glasgow, online at timelesstattoos.co.uk or on FB at facebook.com/paul.clave. His portfolio is much broader than just this of course, but what caught my eye is a series of blackwork tattoos that he calls “apocalyptical works”. As you can see, they draw heavily from the paranoid era of religious paranoia and death-obsession in the Dark Ages brought on by terrors like the Black Plague, as well as the type of linework that was used in woodcuts of the time. This imagery translates just perfectly into tattoo form I think.
Here’s an oldie but a goodie. This scarification was done by Lukas Zipra back in 2002, three years before the first Scar Wars. You can also tell the age by the environment, as you don’t see too many professional scarification artists these days working on someone with only a bedsheet between the client and the furniture. The young lady in the photo is IAM: AstridVanD, formerly known as Dark Delilah.
One aspect of modification that we don’t talk about a lot is the setting of goals. Often we focus on pushing the limits, as that can yield some incredible results. However for most of us, setting a goal and working towards it is a key element in our journey to reshape our bodies. The reason I’m bringing this up is that one member of the community has just hit a goal that he set some time ago. Kev_n has finally reached his goal size for his transscrotal, and although he neglected to mention the specific size, it’s clear that he’s been stretching it for a while.
Yeah, even with the blurring it’s still painfully obvious what the image is of, but you’ll still have to read ahead to see the unblurred version.
And there you have it. Congratulations Kev_n for reaching your goal!
This summer’s remake of TOTAL RECALL puts a great deal of effort into creating a convincing dystopian future that is reminiscent of other films in the genre like Blade Runner. When Blade Runner was made, the art team could not have predicted the proliferation of body modification, but since this film was made in the “age of mods”, they had no choice but to include it, and I think they did a good job imagining a possible future. Not including three boobed-women, the film includes two main pieces of future mods revolving around implantable technology. The first they show is telephones implanted into the hand, which the main character actually cuts out after using since it includes a tracking device. It’s very clearly an implant of the traditional sort, because he is able to cut a slit and pull it out. It lights up and is visible through the skin when used, and gains additional functionality when interfaced to “glass” (a monitor). The other modification we see is some sort of electroluminescent tattooing, where the lines light up like bright neon. These however are not implanted wiring, but some sort of ink particle that can be activated by a power source, as we see a brief scene of the tattoos being applied by what still appears to be a traditional tattoo machine.
If you liked the bio-hackers video that I posted yesterday, and the sort of stuff in those admittedly low-quality screen caps (all I could find right now, sorry), you may also want to watch this talk given by deranged visionary and scrapheap transhumanist Lepht Anonym (sapiensanonym.blogspot.ca). Lepht is an interesting character… On one hand, deeply irresponsible and a little incompetent and self-defeating in their DIY stance that is so aggressive it seems to plug its ears to common sense and medical reasoning that might speed up the process, but on the other hand, with a passion and intimate need to make dreams real that is all too rare in most people. I find Lepht both troubling and inspiring because I support what they’re doing, but feel like there are far better ways to go about it.
Aren’t people with facial tattoos supposed to be scary and threatening? I swear, JoeSnake (of Evolve Body Jewelry) has some sort of loveable goofball aura that extends fifteen feet around him and guarantees that in any picture taken of him everyone is acting as silly as possible. Gawd, he’s almost as bad as Cere.
Grace had always thought of getting her bellybutton removed, but never thought it was possible short of going to a doctor — which she wasn’t about to do because she thought that a doctor wouldn’t have the requisite artistic vision. She also assumed a mod artist wouldn’t have the requisite skills — until she met Howie (lunacobra.net), who she’d originally gone to for ear pointing when he was guesting at Divine Canvas. Unfortunately she only had enough $$$ for one ear, so they sat down and chatted about other options — face cutting, subdermal implants, and so on… after a moment of silence she started lifting her top.
Before Howie had the chance to explain he wasn’t into trading sex for mods, she pointed at her navel and said, “can you get rid of this?”
After a bit of assessing her anatomy, the depth of her navel, and so on, he felt he could do it well. The procedure went quite quickly and with minimal trauma, and the healing was easy — just a little itching from the stitches. It’s now Grace’s favorite mod of all the ones she has, although it has stiff competition from the face cutting that Howie added to her collection a few months later. Oh and if you’re curious, click here for a before photo.
Think you know what’s being pierced? Read on to see if you’re right.
Admittedly this one was pretty easy to guess, although I can see where people may get confused and guess something other than penis.
You can see more in the CBT and Similar Play Piercing gallery. And if you’re looking to pick up some fresh needles yourself, be sure to visit the BMEShop. The shop itself is closed right now due to it being moved, but it should be back up and running really soon.
The very first thing everyone should be doing today is wishing Fakir Musafar a happy birthday! Now, some things are remembered with a moment of silence, but I think that the best thing to do for this day is to photograph your body play — your body art, modifications, rituals… The list of Fakir’s contributions to this community is so long I couldn’t possibly do it justice in a single posting, but I think one of the most important was his drive to document this community, beginning with himself, be that in his private world, or that which he shared with the world in PFIQ and Body Play and other media. Anyway, Fakir is the greatest, he was there at the start making this world and this community a better place, and he’s still going strong, and I expect and hope he will continue to for a long time yet.
“I just want to see how far I can push the human.”
The Verge has just posted a very fun little documentary on “Grindhouse Wetwares” and other groups working on functional implants and “scrapheap transhumanism” (love that term), as well as some great coverage of magnetic implants and things like that. It’s a bit over ten minutes long and lots of fun. Set some time aside and check it out. I have to be honest that I am not terribly impressed by what has been done so far, but these are baby steps being taken, and I hope that even if it falls far short, I’d like to think it will inspire people to go further and do it better.
I saw this branding in Alejandro Hernandez Salazar’s portfolio (Tattoos by Spooky, Mexico) and the first thing I thought of was the scalp brands that some Buddhist monks wear, but after looking further into the gallery I realized that these were actually very intense strike brands, done by using a propane torch to heat up a very large bar of metal that must carry an incredible amount of heat inertia. I actually spent some time wondering which method would be “worse” for the person having it done. The Buddhist brands, known as “jieba” (ordination scars), are done in rows of three (which I guess should have been my instant tip-off) making either 6, 9, or 12 scars, which take about five minutes flesh slowly sizzling from the incense… but the amount of energy in that big bar once heated? A bit scary. Click here for the photo credit on the monk by the way.
