----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Hello,
I’m looking forward to our discussion this week and to continuing the
precedent set by Johannes. Thanks Sue and Simon for your invitation and for
moderating this month. Participants from last week and new voices are
highly encouraged to join in. Since there were many resonant aspects of
“virtual embodiment” last week, I’d like to volunteer a simultaneous prompt
and response for these complicated terms.
To begin this week, I’d like to invoke Susan’s apt introduction to week 1:
“Philosophically, the virtual opened a sense of that which has
not-yet-been-formed. Something protean, filled with the potential for
things to be otherwise. Seductive indeed.”
Even today is the virtual still synonymous with “promise”: a deferred ideal
always on the cusp, the prophecy of a glitchless future? What’s fascinating
is how the idea of the “virtual” is simultaneously retro and forward
facing. Regardless if we propose the virtual as an altered organic state or
as a digital byproduct, it seems that there is something implicit we are
defining it against. What is this pre-existing conception? Is it located in
media history, in pop psychology? Both cases craft a term that is at once
both nascent and tired.
Or, is the virtual a state that renews? Does the virtual adapt so that each
generation must always ask when its particular incarnation will be
actualized (meanwhile not realizing that a component of the previous
generation’s virtual has been invisibly absorbed into everyday life-the
reality may thwart past expectations). There is something poetic about
yearning for a future that will always be altered in practice, but still
retains an ideal where any limitation (of technology/of consciousness) can
be overcome.
The introduction to this month’s topic reminds me that as I write this from
the University of Southern California (the sort-of origin of Oculus), I
have been privileged to have the bizarre experiences of designing for,
witnessing the development of or performing through Google Glass and Oculus
Rift. Coupled with previous work in a CAVE, my experience in
directing/designing/performing in and through material interfaces have
influenced thoughts on the slippery slope of defining “embodiment” in
relation to the “virtual”. I can converse about this if it feels
appropriate, but I’m most interested in fostering open conversation. Feel
free to take these broad prompts for discussion or formulate some of your
own.
Are embodiment and immersion inherently resonant?
If there is some cross-pollination of ideals, how are these states enhanced
or counteracted by dual consciousness or the body’s innate
haptic/proprioceptive awareness?
How do the material realities of the interface and apparatus create
cohesion or friction in the practice of, or the ideal of embodiment?
-Johannes’ earlier reference to embodiment and interface as a kind of
assemblage.
Earlier Johannes also summarized John:
““The dialectic of reality/virtuality is fundamentally about the
‘allowance’ or attenuation of potential energy flows as they effect change
in the energized body.”
How might artists attenuate audience/performer attention (as energy) and
effect change?
Finally, last week, I’m glad Alan mentioned “critique of the corporate”.
Getting to occasionally glimpse behind the curtain of industry and
corporate development in Southern California has convinced me that the
virtual has some very real world underpinnings. Whether implicitly or
explicitly, these development practices likely seep into our work and
discussion. Johannes’ proclamation of “industry promises and accoutrements”
may be the true reality behind the virtual. Perhaps, we should be more
creatively cognizant of this.
-Samantha
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--
Samantha Gorman
Annenberg Fellow and PhD Student, University of Southern California
Interdivisional Media Arts and Practices (iMAP)
http://samanthagorman.net/
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