Ian Haig works across media, from video, sculpture, drawing, technology based media and installation. Haig’s practice refuses to accept that the low and the base level are devoid of value and cultural meaning. His body obsessed themes can be seen throughout a large body of work over the last twenty years. Previous works have looked to the contemporary media sphere and its relationship to the visceral body, the degenerative aspects of pervasive new technologies, to cultural forms of fanaticism and cults, to ideas of attraction and repulsion, body horror and the defamiliarisation of the human body.
Flesh extender takes its name from seafood extender, a popular imitation mystery meat designed to extend the content of an Asian meal. Flesh extender presents a new kind of imitation mystery meat in the form of monstrously augmented virtual genitalia, our bodies extended into the non space of VR. Flesh extender presents a series of virtual genitalia for you to strap on. Sex as a zone of virtual otherness, a hyper sensory uncanny overload, of inside and outside bodies, of VR sex weirdness and interchangeable sex organs. From the mediated sexualities of Tinder, Grinder, and internet porn simulations. Flesh Extender explores VR as a free floating zone of simulation and stimulation, our bodies extended and augmented through other bodies, objects and media.
The focus on much VR has been heighted vision, Oculus Rift implies VR as a new kind of ocular disruption. Flesh extender places the focus of VR away for the heady ocular region towards the lower and more base level zones of our genitalia.
