His earliest work, in the 90s, involved 3D models or "bodies" being manipulated by internet traffic. He later worked with prosthetics on his own body that controlled these internet bodies.
One of his more interesting later pieces, Exoskeleton, was exactly that, a six-legged walking machine with an additional left arm. Aesthetically, the exoskeleton looks like something out of a mad scientist's laboratory. Stelarc seems drawn to the anti-aesthetic and almost cyberpunk look of blending technology with human physiology. He has continued to explore the form of the exoskeleton with later pieces like Hexapod and Muscle Machine.
In a more recent piece, Blender, Stelarc collaborated with Nina Sellars to create a machine which blends surgically removed fat and blood from both of their bodies, in another machine that could be described as having the super-science aesthetic.
One of his most recent and popular projects was the recent execution of a long-planned Prosthetic Ear. Originally imagined as placed on his own cheek, it was finally placed in the inside of his forearm. Sculpted of Medpor, it used skin expanded by subcutaneous injection of saline solution. It had a microphone which wirelessly transmitted audio signals, but it had to be removed due to infection. He plans to perfect the microphone and re-insert it, so that it can broadcast audio to other listening devices over the internet.
Stelarc's fascination with blending flesh and technology forecasts in a way the actual advances that could take place in the years and centuries to come. Ideas put forth in popular culture seem to be possible influences, such as cyber-punk culture, coined by William Gibson, and the popular Japanese comic and animated series Ghost in the Shell, which explores the effects of partially- and fully-prosthetic bodies. In this way, his work holds a great deal of relevance today as well as in the future, as this technology becomes commercially available.
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