When Stelarc says he has "something up my sleeve," he really means it.

The Perth-based university professor and well-known performance artist has grown an ear on his arm as part of an art project, he told Channel Nine's morning show, the Today Show, on Wednesday.

A medical team inserted a bio-polymer scaffold in the shape of an ear under his skin, he said, and over six months, tissue and blood vessels grew around it. "It is partly surgically constructed, and partially cell-grown," he said.

The experiment has taken almost a decade to get to this point, and Stelarc's not done yet.

Growing an ear lobe on the ear cultivated from his own stem cells is the next step, and then Stelarc intends to have a microphone with a wireless transmitter inserted so the ear can be connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi. This will allow people listening online to hear what the ear is hearing.

Eventually, it might even be GPS-enabled, so Stelarc and his ear can be tracked online.

"This ear is not for me, I've got two good ears to hear with. 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 ... imagine if I could hear with the ears of someone in New York."

A microphone had been previously added, but an infection meant it had to be removed.

The artist has been working on blurring the body and machine for many years. In a 2013 interview about his career and work, Stelarc told Motherboard that reactions to his arm-ear range from fascination to horror.

"I hope people will become curious about what in actuality is a body and how a body performs in the world," he said. "Is it really necessary to operate as if we are a self or a soul or a mind under these rather medieval entities that we could really do without?"