[-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment: week 2

[Simon Biggs]

Welcome to the second week of the July discussion on  –empyre–  soft-skinned space:

Moderated by Sue Hawksley (UK/AUS) and Simon Biggs (AUS/UK) with invited discussants Susan Kozel (SE), Johannes Birringer (UK), Samantha Gorman (USA), Sophia Lycouris (UK), Tamara Ashley (UK), Garth Paine (USA), Hellen Sky (AUS), Daniel Tercio (PT), Sally Jane Norman (NZ/FR) and Sarah Whatley (UK).

The month's discussion engages issues concerning 'virtual embodiment'. This theme is open to interpretation - suggesting concepts and practices that are situated in the physical, the computational, the imaginative, the metaphysical or all of these spaces, depending on context. Facebook's acquisition of Oculus, developers of the Rift virtual reality headset, promises to make a new virtual experiential space popularly available. This raises questions about the impact of the virtual when it converges with popular social media. As shared VR experiences becomes pervasive how might social conventions shift and notions of selfhood and collective evolve? What might a collective virtual experience contribute to notions of extended or distributed mind, agency or identity? Does virtual embodiment depend on, augment or replace bodily practices? What will the quotidian affects be?

During the first week of discussion we have engaged this theme from a number of perspectives, as distinct as Assyrian semantics, the abject, collaborative international arts projects, the Foucauldian dispositif and the Deleuzian apparatus, breathing, deep concentration and a little media theory. For the second week of discussion around 'virtual embodiment' we welcome Samantha Gorman and Sophia Lycouris:

Samantha Gorman is a writer, scholar and artist who composes for text, cinema and digital media. Her current work includes the App novella Pry. In Pry, the reader tugs apart lines of the narrative in order to grasp the protagonist's thoughts: http://prynovella.com. Samantha holds an MFA from Brown University in Digital Language Arts. She has taught courses in Digitally Mediated Performance and Digital Literature at the Rhode Island School of Design. Samantha currently lives in L.A. where she is a Ph.D. candidate in the interdivisional Media Arts + Practice (iMAP) program at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. 

Sophia Lycouris is an artist working with movement/dance, choreography, improvisation and performance for over than twenty years, who gradually developed a dialogue with new technologies. Her most recent work, City Glimpses (2013), is a multi-sited improvisational piece exploring relationships between physical and virtual performance sites (www.recalesce.net). Sophia is also an academic researcher interested in interdisciplinary methodologies, including approaches informed by creative practice. She is currently Reader in Interdisciplinary Choreography at the University of Edinburgh, UK.


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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