Professor grows ear on his arm that will connect to the Internet

An Australian professor and artist doesn’t need to bend anyone’s ear in order to promote his latest experiment, which involves growing an ear on his arm.

The Perth-based university professor and performance artist known as Stelarc has explored manipulated limbs in other performances, including an extended arm and third hand. He told Australia’s Today Show that having an ear in his arm felt like a natural progression.

The extra ear is both surgically constructed and cell-grown. A bio-polymer scaffold shaped like an ear was inserted under Stelarc’s skin by a team of doctors. Within half a year, blood vessels and tissue grew around the foreign object.

“This ear not only becomes fixed, but really a part of your body,” he told the Today Show. He later added that he’s “always got something up my sleeve.”

The experiment has taken nearly a decade to launch, and isn’t quite finished yet. Stelarc intends to make it fully functioning by implanting a microphone with a wireless transmitter into the ear, in order for it to access the Internet through Wi-Fi. That way, people online can hear the sounds it’s picking up.

Eventually, Stelarc hopes it will also be able to be tracked through GPS. A previous attempt to insert a microphone resulted in an infection and the instrument had to be removed.

Stelarc claims this project isn’t for his own benefit, but for others.

“This ear is a remote listening device for people in other places,” he told ABC News. “They’ll be able to follow a conversation or hear the sounds of a concert, wherever I am, wherever you are.”

Stelarc has been exploring the boundaries of the human body for years. Many of his performances meld the body with robotics and foreign objects like flesh hook suspension.