[-empyre-] virtual embodiment - some thoughts on resonances of the virtual in 2014

[Susan Kozel]

Thanks Johannes – much to follow up on.
And at the risk of making this a conversation between Johannes and myself, I will add one more thought. Yesterday I tried to open up and problematize the ‘virtual’ and today Johannes did the same for ‘embodiment’
His citation of Roy Ascott points out the importance of the interface for the ‘content’ of media art, but Johannes take this further by indicating that embodiment and interface exist in a sort of assemblage. This is a useful term to unpack. What are the elements of the assemblage relating to virtual embodiment? What does assemblage even mean in this context? Is it useful to us as we explore new technological and poetic configurations?
Recently the interaction designer Bill Gaver said  that he was ‘so over embodiment.’ That it was boring, and he quite simply was not interested in it anymore. He said this at lunch rather than in a formal presentation so perhaps it was the pasta speaking, but it worried me for it revealed a conviction that we had exhausted our understanding of embodiment. Of course as a designer he has in mind the ability to produce and sell systems, software, or products, but are artists able to escape the market forces around our exploration of embodiment?
I’ll step back now. I look forward to hearing what others have to say. Feel free also to launch a completely new trajectory into the discussion.

On Jul 2, 2014, at 2:30 PM, Johannes Birringer wrote:

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------

p.s.

(Roy Ascott's vision of "love" in the telematic embrace was of course a kind of  theoretical manifesto, a credo, and so it must be appreciated within its historical
context of the early years"of the digital/networks - 1970s/1980s)

This is what Ascott also suggests, and some of it still has a bearing:

It may not be an exaggeration to say that the "content" of telematic art will depend in large measure on the nature of the interface;
that is, the kind of configurations and assemblies of image, sound, and text, the kind of restructuring and articulation of environment
that telematic interactivity might yield, will be determined by the freedoms and fluidity available at the interface.>*


This might inspire us to inquire into control systems and the current assemblages, & thus the conditions under which something like
"virtual embodiment" is producible, even if fantasmatically and as a perverse ideology.


regards
Johannes


*
http://telematicconnections.walkerart.org/overview/overview_ascott.html

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