TITLE

DISEMBODIMENT AND RE-EMBODIMENT IN DIGITAL WORLD

STUDENT NAME: NATASHA SINGH

STUDENT ID: SIN11350267

COURSE NAME: MA COMMUNICATION DESIGN

SUPERVISOR: SHEENA CALVERT

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 05 MARCH 2012

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CONTENTS

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………………...03

INTRODUCTION………………………………...……………………………………………………..03

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………………..07

REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………………….08

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ABSTRACT

This paper attempts to signify the spatial relationship of human with the digital world and

also state the reason to bridge a gap between the symbolic and corporeal, between the

virtual and real.

INTRODUCTION

The only source of light in an otherwise dark room into the world which is not real, as we can`t

spatially locate it as a tangible object and yet it immerses us so deeply that we almost forget that

we have a real corporeal world around us. Its effects are clearly so real. We sit motionless,

relaxed, almost in a state of meditation and get disembodied by the power of visual and information

graphics. We almost turn into a software1, we become one with the digital world.

“Any medium presents a figure whose ground is always hidden or subliminal. In case of television,

as of the telephone or the radio, the subliminal ground would be called the disincarnate or

disembodied user. This is to say that when you are “on the telephone” or “on air”, you do not have

a physical body. In these media, the sender is sent and is instantaneously present everywhere.

The disembodied user extends to all those who are recipients of electric information. It is these

people who constitute the mass audience.”2

I, therefore, would like to show you through this extensive research, how we as humans,

inhabitants of the physical natural world, are so immersed by the network created by our own

nervous systems, which is an extension of our consciousness, that we have stopped relishing our

first love with nature. As I started studying more indepth about my project, i happened to observe

people more and their relationship with their digital gadgets. Then I also realized something

strange, that the digital technology hasn`t taken a toll over all of us. Usually when you are in a

tube, you see mostly the older generation ( from age 45 to 60) reading a book or a newspaper to

pass time, but on the other hand if you really want to see the victims of digital absorption, you

should see the younger generation which is quite a broad term. From a 10 year old young boy,

hooked on to his dad`s iphone, playing virtual games to a 17 year old teenager listening to her

ipod, completely shutting herself from the rest and probably keeping herself away from getting

distracted by other people`s conversation, to a 27 year old reading his blogs or checking his mail

again, which he might have already done five minutes back. As such, there is a complete

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metamorphosis of the user by the interface, here being a digital artifact. Gone are the days when

reading was oral, either aloud, in groups, or individually. As Paul Saenger mentions in his book

Space Between Words, the text format in which thought has been presented to readers has

undergone many changes in order to reach the form that the modern Western reader now views as

immutable and nearly universal3. The text has become simpler over the years and now more

visual.

The author also talks about the ancient reading habits in relation with their oral basis, and in the

social context where reading and writing took place. The ancient world had no desire to make

reading easier and swifter. For various reasons, what modern readers view as advantages—

retrieval of reference information, increased ability to read “difficult” texts, greater diffusion of

literacy—were not seen as advantages in the ancient world. The notion that a larger portion of the

population should be autonomous and self-motivated readers was entirely foreign to the ancient

world’s elitist mentality.4

So what makes the digital space so captivating that we forget our very own existance in the

physical world is something that I found immense interest in.

However I thought I knew the answer until recently when I started observing and analyzing

people`s actions and their relation with the nearly feather weight gadget which they comfortably fit

into their skinny jeans. I thought the answer was the visual experience that the digital art provides

in the interface, but there is much more than that, which transcends our consciousness and drifts

us away from the charm and beauty of the physical world. I would like to explain the real answer in

the following paragraphs with the help of some examples and references.

“If we understand the revolutionary transformations caused by new media, we can anticipate and

control them. But if we continue in our self induced subliminal trance, we will be their slave”5 –

Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media: The Extension Of Mind

I believe we need to understand that how much ever fascinating the digital technology is in today`s

world, we shouldn`t capture ourselves so intensely that we forget our life beyond the computer

screen6, as quoted by William Gibson in his book Neuromancer.

There is a reason why its called a World Wide Web or CyberWorld or Digital World, a world in

itself, that its so vast a person can soon suffer from information or a digital overload. Though some

people would beg to differ as its human to not to be called slaves of something which has been

created by one`s own, although they will neglect how dear their digital friends are to them, so much

that they sleep with their mobile phones next to them, wake up and start their day with their laptops

or computers, have the most important meal of the day sitting infront of the screen, reading their

digital newspaper and not relishing on what they are surviving on. Perhaps it’s the digital world

they are immensely dependant on.

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To understand the digital world more, we should understand the role Digital art plays. Its been

described as follows in the book “Windows and Mirror” – Jay David Bolter and Diane Gromala:

In every digital artifact, from spreadsheet to video games, the physical space, the interface, the

look and feel are part of user`s experience. Every digital artifact needs at times to be visible to its

users, it needs to be both a window and a mirror.7

Digital Interfaces are the mirrors in the sense that they reflect the user in context, including their

physical surrounding, their immediate working or home environment and the larger environment

defined by their language and culture.

I would like to explain this using an example of the choice of wallpapers people use for their

iphones8, which inturn speaks great volume of themselves.

In the age of the Internet, people visit MUDs and MOOs and choose avatars to represent

themselves in virtual environments; they slip in and out of character. In a virtual community, the

"players" live parallel lives by cycling through windows. Windows and screens are the metaphors

that influence our experience of life, and virtual life allows people to have a presence in several

windows and contexts simultaneously.

Sherry Turkle has defined the online self as a multiple, distributed, time-sharing system. Our

identity in the age of the Internet is characterized by multiplicity, heterogeneity and fragmentation.9

Both the cyberbody and the perceptual body may interact with the world they find themselves in,

but there still seems to be a lack of sensory experience in virtual worlds. Can cyberspace become

an extension of our nervous system? Is there something like digital perception? How can our

technologically enhanced bodies connect? Various projects have tried to address these questions.

Religious Spanish Chinese Japanese Patriotic African Indian user sports lover character female user American nature user user lover

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Stahl Stenslie's Tactile Technologies (TT) attempt to expand the perceptual limits of technology.

TT tries to introduce the body to digital perception by focusing on

bodily sensations and stimuli. In Stenslie's Inter_Skin project, the

two participants wear a sensoric outfit that is capable of both

transmitting and receiving different multi-sensoric stimuli. The

communication system concentrates on the transmission and

receiving of sensual contact.

Stahl Stenslie's "Inter_Skin" experiments with technologically

enhanced bodies.10

The possibilities of "connecting" are taken to a further level by the Inter Dis-communication

Machine developed by Kazuhiko Hachiya (Prix Ars Electronica, 1996). Played by two people

wearing head-mounted displays, the machine projects one player's sight and sound perception of

the virtual "playground" into the other one's display, thus confusing the borders between "you" and

"me." Both "Inter_skin"—which let's you feel the bodily sensations of another person and can

record and play back the tactile stimuli—and the "Inter Dis-communication Machine" are

reminiscent of the "Sim-Stim" device in William Gibson's Neuromancer, which allows a user to

'enter' another person's body and perception (without being able to influence it).

You can only see through the other person’s eyes when you

wear these machines, which forcibly put you in the other’s

place. These were made to obscure the border between

identities of two persons. This work has been exhibited in

many places. Technically improved each time, however the

concept “to make it possible to kiss or to make love with the

partner while keeping the machines on” is observed.

Equipments which exchange views between two persons.11

Another tremendous work done by Camille in an attempt to

bridge the conceptual and the corporeal called Untitled 512.

Utterback’s interactive software ‘paintings’ evoke existentialist

abstractions, particularly those of Jackson Pollock, by way of

gestural bodily movement. While complex algorithms and

patterns can be found in Pollock’s drip paintings, Utterback

actually employs complex algorithms to create her pieces.

Operating in an interactive public space not unlike the social spaces of Facebook, mySpace, or

wiki software that encourages peer-topeer interaction, her pieces model themselves, somewhat

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presciently of self-assembly, after this p2p paradigm. Yet, the networked social spaces simulate

social presence through notions of disembodiment even in times of physical isolation, while

Utterback’s work brings these notions of social presence while the participants are still socially

present. As viewers move about, a motion-sensing camera and video tracking software (similar to

what is known as ambient intelligence) capture and respond to body movement to create the digital

painting, thus their actions are embodied within the painting. Utterback becomes the facilitator,

while others help contribute visually to the non-static, morphological painting. Her other famous

interactive works are Active Ecosystem (2011), Shifting Time - San Jose (2010), Liquid Time

Tenderloin (2009), Text Rain (2005).

On the basis of these projects, one could make convincing arguments that we already have turned

into cyborgs as technologically enhanced and extended bodies. The cyborg as cyberbody still is to

a large extent an unexplored field and we're just beginning to understand the effect that

technologies such as genetic engineering have on our physical bodies.

One might speculate that the boundaries of our bodies will continue to dissolve and that the

question "Who am I?" will become less relevant in the future, replaced by "What is all that I can

be?"

CONCLUSION

With the movement from a culture of calculations towards a culture of simulation have come

changes in what computers do for us and in what they do to us, this is to say our relationship and

our ways of thinking about ourselves.13 Digital media so far has been the most influential in terms

of completely taking the human mind into a non tangible world and also making him play with his

own identity online.Thats the power of today`s media. It disembodies human not only from its

physical body but also from his physical world. Therefore, to merge these two magnificient worlds

of human would pose a great challenge and I am really excited to take that up as my major

research study.

Hence I would like to end this on the following quote said by Richard Edelman in Esquire magazine

(1996)

“In this era of exploding media technologies, there is no truth except the truth you create for

yourself”14

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REFERENCES

1 Marshall McLuhan - Medium Is The Message: An Inventory of Effects (Bantam Books, 1967) 2 McLuhan, “A Last Look at the Tube”, New York magazine, 1978 3 Paul Saenger - Space Between Words (Introduction), Stanford University Press,2000 4 Paul Saenger - Space Between Words (Introduction), Stanford University Press,2000 5 Marshall McLuhan - Understanding Media: The Extension Of Mind 6 William Gibson - Neuromancer 7 Jay David Bolter and Diane Gromala - Windows and Mirror (Leonardo Book Series) 8 Images taken from Google 9 Sherry Turtle – Life On The Screen 10 http://www.khm.de/~mem_brane/Stahl/stahl.html 11 http://eyebeam.org/people/kazuhiko-hachiya 12 http://camilleutterback.com/ 13 Sherry Turtle – Life On The Screen 14 Richard Edelman in Esquire magazine (1996)