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
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 3
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. 4
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.
Religious Indian user
Spanish sports lover
Chinese character user
Japanese female user
Patriotic American user
African nature lover
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.
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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 6
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
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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)
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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)
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