----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
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 <[email protected]> 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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>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> _______________________________________________
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Simon Biggs
[email protected] | @_simonbiggs_
http://www.littlepig.org.uk | http://amazon.com/author/simonbiggs
[email protected] | Professor of Art, University of South Australia
http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/staff/homepage.asp?name=simon.biggs
[email protected] | 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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