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

[Simon Biggs]

Johannes' use of the term assemblage is very useful - and I'd add the related term dispositif. These are powerful concepts for understanding our relations with our technical systems, whether conventional (language and time) or emergent (interactive and remote sensing systems). Each concept allows us insight into how our systems and ourselves are of an ilk. We evolve as our systems evolve. To be human is to be technological, technologised.

Susan's anecdote about Bill Gaver's exasperation with embodiment I find somewhat bemusing in this context. I would hope that embodiment offers us something distinct to a marketing or product development opportunity. Embodiment offers another means by which we can address, interrogate and unpack how we become what we are as a dispositif - as a convergence of all our elements, inlcuding our attendant (symbolic and material) systems.

I am not seeking to argue that embodiment is pre-symbolic or somehow offers us power through its 'primitive' qualities. I don't see much value in establishing such a duality. Rather, I suggest that in our society the body remains a complex unknown, often taboo, and that it is in this sense it offers another less travelled route for engaging our technical systems. I guess I'm just attracted to the less well-worn path and have a suspicion interesting insights might thus be found.

So, I disagree with Gaver.

best

Simon


On 2 Jul 2014, at 23:06, Susan Kozel <susan.kozel at mah.se> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 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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> 
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Simon Biggs
simon at littlepig.org.uk  |  @_simonbiggs_ 
http://www.littlepig.org.uk  |  http://amazon.com/author/simonbiggs

simon.biggs at unisa.edu.au  |  Professor of Art, University of South Australia
http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/staff/homepage.asp?name=simon.biggs

s.biggs at ed.ac.uk  |  Honorary Professor, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art/school-of-art/staff/staff?person_id=182&cw_xml=profile.php

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