(Dis)embodied: How Technology Affects Representations of the Body
By Marie Chatel
Representing our physical traits and those of others, realistically or not, is a constant subject of art history which continues to intrigue artists working with digital tools, network systems, and biotechnologies. From avatars to cyborgs and technologically-augmented humans, here is a highlight of several themes and approaches to body depiction in the age of new media.
When thinking of video games and online worlds, it seems most likely that virtual worlds give an excuse for “escapism,” erasing all the physical problems from our daily routine to become whoever we want to be and do whatever we want to do. But digital artists and critics of new media understand the field of body and technology as providing with new opportunities to challenge binaries — curvy or slim, short or tall, black or white, female or male — and the power dynamics inherent to our patriarchal systems. For instance, artist and posthumanism pioneer Lynn Hershman Leeson describes works like hers as “strategies of resistance” and furthers:
They are counter attempts to defy the limitation of censorship and eradication of an individual’s voice biased on the logistics of their body, gender, and perceived limitations imposed and sanctioned by an ineffective and prejudiced society.”
This vision matches that of two major theoreticians of the field — Sherry Turkle and Katherine Hayles — who reveal how technology provides momentum for physical emancipation. Despite similar intent, the two thinkers show diverging streams of thought — one valuing disembodiment and virtuality while the other considers the binding of body and mind as a prerogative to the human condition.
Online identity, avatars, and multiplicity
In her influential book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995), Sherry Turkle analyzes issues of identity in cyberspaces, arguing that online worlds allow people to act out different scenarios, and explore new sides of their personality, which they can then apply to “real life” interactions. These experiences continue the Pygmalion story and the fantasy that we are not limited to our histories and can recreate ourselves. Virtuality allows people to play multiple facets at once, personifying a plurality of avatars and online personas.
Beyond allowing a simultaneous presence in different windows and contexts, online interactions foster constant reproduction of the self without the body — advocating for a split between mind and body as a means for freedom and confidence. Avatars can take the physical or organic shapes that their creator chooses so that material aspects match personal judgment without leaving any place for friction, self-hate, and a lack of appreciation of a non-chosen physical reality. For instance, artists like Lu Yang and Theo Triantafyllidis use virtuality to explore the fluidity of identity, gender, and sexuality — bringing to the forth the idea that avatars can escape binaries (they don’t even have to resemble humans). Another good example is LaTurbo Avedon, a virtual protagonist who creates online personalities and socially interacts in cyberspace only. As the artist-avatar explains,
I’m more interested in personhood and individuality, but in the sense that a single user can have all sorts of “individuals” and aspects of themselves worth exploring and sharing. I mean this in both a personal and a creative sense. I think a lot of people have missed out on interesting aspects of their experience due to the expectation of a singular “real” self. I dislike these sorts of normative structures, and the Internet has shown that there are all sorts of branches and variations of identities that can be explored in virtual space.
In Ribbons (2014) and Safe Conduct (2016), Ed Atkins also questions the dissociation of body and mind by using his avatar to represent cadavers as flesh without a soul mirroring the nature of an avatar as a shell. Beating, fragmenting, and maltreating the bodies of his digital characters to death, Ed Atkins looks at triggering corporeal empathy. Voices, breath, and other material noises accompany the visuals to further the bond between the avatar and its viewer. Conspicuously, while viewers metabolize the avatars’ physical trauma, they stand behind a screen forgetting about their existence and sensation. But isn’t it ludicrous, neglecting our flesh to embody the other?
Post-humanism, cyborgs, and the extended body
What limits the previous theory is that subjectivity equates with the mind, which, according to Katherine Hayles, shows a strong denial of the impact our bodies have on the way we think and act. The reality of being disembodied into an electronic device brings back some old thirst for transcendence, immortality, and perfection, but also asks for actual feasibility. Hayles stresses the reality of hunching over a computer, eyes dry and fatigued from long screen exposures, and wonders how we forget about the physical discomfort we experience as we “immerse” into virtual worlds — something Sondra Perry brilliantly captured in her work Graft and Ash (2016) as she points to the oppression of technology and its adverse health consequences.
As the interplay between man and machine becomes inevitable and the need for interfaces grows, Hayles calls for symbiosis with technology through posthuman forms — cyborgs and extended bodies. The primary issue remains how we would incorporate robotics, prosthetics, and the internet to facilitate our relationship to technology, making it more materially comfortable to sustain. For instance, Eduardo Kac’s Time Capsule (1997) announced the implant of microchips as a mean of liberating the body from the machine, but also as an attempt to freedom because of the permeability of information entailed to connectivity and networked communication.
While a fusion with technology feeds a utopia, it also opens a field for SCI-FI nightmarish situations where the machines take control over our bodies — something pioneer artist Stelarc encapsulated with his piece Exoskeleton (1998), a mechanic walking machine activated through muscle stimulation as a remote audience enables the device through internet. Likewise, Hito Steyerl’s Factory of the Sun (2015) presents dancing bodies which enter into motion when stimulated by sunlight. In doing so, the artist evokes how our bodies progressively become data sources — an illusory promise for augmentation, improvement, and participation which could condemn us to become an “interpassive” species.
