Gizmodo Gallery: Garnet Hertz

Examining this impending phenomenon through the eyes of the planet’s most complex and abundant creatures: insects and amphibians, is Irvine, California-based, Canadian artist, Garnet Hertz. Hertz’s work explores the belief that despite technology’s increasing independence from human or animal intervention, there is still a part of us that wants some control. From implanting a web server into a dead frog whose limbs can be stimulated to “move” by participants over the Internet in “Experiments in Galvanism”, to putting a live Madagascan hissing Cockroach atop a modified trackball to control a three wheeled robot in “Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot”, Hertz creates projects that attempt to challenge and deconstruct these notions of technological progress over-stepping human jurisdiction. Gizmodo spoke to Hertz about his intricate animal-machine-hybrids and his overall view on whether or not technological determinism may be influencing the not-so-distant future.

tags: binary, aegypt, xrays, visual