[-empyre-] body chair language

[Daniel Tércio]

Dear all

Sorry for being absent during the last days/weeks. Traveling and
answering urgent posts put me out of the empire list.

It seems to me that the term embodiment is definitively a milestone in
our discussion. In the last posts, I have been particularly sensitive
to the Garth Paine’s conceptualization of the three sub dimensions of
the Experience and Embodiment.
However, even before (re)visiting the triad of
porosity-perception-presence, let me return naively to the use of the
term embodiment in different languages. And let me use the experience
of Portuguese language that adopted this term, at the same time
questioning its adequacy and its translation. Two points arise on
this: in Portuguese one may find the term “carne” (chain). Embodiment
= “encarnação”? This sounds very mystical when one thinks in Crist as
the incarnation of God. The other term is “corpo”… Embodiment =
incorporação? This could sound very much economically, as an
enterprises’ issue, like a firm incorporating other firm, or medical,
when someone incorporates a chemical substance. Both terms are not
normally adopted in the arts field, and that’s why the term embodiment
is being adopted into the Portuguese language. Nevertheless, the
terminological issue allows rethinking the articulation between
incarnation, incorporation and embodiment.
My point is that embodiment should be considered as a process in two
directions. I mean: we are not just embodying technologies; the
technologies are embodying the human behavior.
A third question arises from this: the absolute necessity of the
interface. Is the interface the “box” (the black box) that mediates
and connects and articulates the human, the device and the happening?
I imagine that a black box of an airplane should record the pilot
actions, the instruments behavior and (in case of a catastrophe) the
context/situation. The interface is a machine in Deleuze/Guatari
terms.
In past posts, I found the concept of dispositive, which is
articulated with the concept of machine. Maybe we could return to this
issue.

(By the moment this is my small contribution to the empire list,
hoping that I am not interrupting other argumentation line)

best regards

Daniel Tercio