I've never understood it. I have plenty of tattoos and had many piercings when I was younger, but cutting chunks of flesh out of yourself doesn't really make me think "art", just "mutilation". Same for implants. I saw a picture of some guy on the internet and he had implants down his forearm with pokeballs tattooed over them. Never understood tongue splitting either.
That BMEzine features some really nasty stuff under the guise of "body modification" which is just self mutilation. I can't even look through it. Turns me like gore videos.