Embodiment can refer to so many different things, and we don’t even really have a solid and workable definition of everything that it can encompass in relation to our course yet. But we know one thing for certain, and that is that it will absolutely border on art, technology and society. When I initially set out to do this presentation, my ideas of embodiment in art was basically just that it was installation art which would combine the body and physical space, with some computing and digital technology in the mix. But there are some artists who combine installation art with performance art in a new way, and that is by physically becoming their art using new technologies that were not available in the past.
Orlan is a French artist who was born in 1947. She uses a variety of mediums including performance art, as well multimedia in the form of video and digital photography. She has gone beyond conventional artists who use their body in their art and had surgeries performed which she calls “Orlan Carnal Art.” The plastic surgery she has undergone changed her face in a way that defies traditional ideas of beauty; she used surgery as a medium to communicate her views on beauty standards. Furthermore, she turns each of her surgeries into a live performance piece by staying awake during the operation, having it recorded and broadcast, and even reads aloud and answers questions while it is going on.
At first it may seem that Orlan is just another example of a woman getting plastic surgery to try to conform to a set of beauty standards, and that combining technology and her flesh is just something excessive that is typical, and almost to be expected in our modern-day society. 
However, if we look closer we can see that this is not the case, because when she talks about cosmetic surgery as a whole, she says that she is not against it, it is a technique of our time, but that she is against its attempts to standardize people. She uses it in an entirely different way, as she tries to use it to cultivate an individual identity, not to construct beauty in the way of dominant ideologies.
These philosophies about beauty standards and the way she goes about attempting to challenge them is also what sets her apart from other artists who work in the same mediums as she does, such as Stelarc, because the art that she does explores different themes. The issues that her art explores are feminist in nature. Someone like Sterlac’s work such as the ear on arm is using a similar medium to Orlan via the way of surgery, but his goals and what he is trying portray are entirely different from hers. Stelarc explores wanting to extend the bodies operational capabilities. 
Orlan’s work follows a certain methodology, each operation she has performed is chosen very deliberately. When referring to all nine surgical performances it is entitled “The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan.” Each surgery has a specific theme, which is revealed during the process as Orlan reads aloud literature and philosophy. “The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan” began when she created a composite image on the computer that combined her face with the faces of famous women in art history. Their portraits represent idealized femininity from different time periods, and it was that digital image that served as the basis for the cosmetic surgeries that she would take on.
Orlan does this to her body to critique notions of beauty which she feels are due to male power structures. In Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway takes the same stance but she uses the metaphor of the cyborg to say that something we think is a natural, like human bodies, are not natural, but are constructed by our ideas about them. Haraway believes that women are often discussed or treated in ways that reduce them to bodies, which is reflected in Orlan’s work as well. Both of their works make the audience examine the role of the body in contemporary digital art and culture, but Orlan takes it a step further and actually physically alters herself, and because of the technological means attached to what she does, she is in a sense becoming post-human, or a cyborg.
Its not just about the type of art she is doing on her physical body, (lots of artists have used their bodies as a canvas before) but also the way she chooses to broadcast the art using technology to increase her stage and performance.In the end, it is difficult to distinguish Orlan’s life from her art because her art has become her life, which to me is a strong characteristic of what embodiment is.
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