Abstract

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FOREIGN BODY - The destabilisation of the body in the evolution of a digitally mediated world

Becca Wood

The less we rely on our physicality for survival in the world, the more we challenge our accepted notions of the body. Our experience of the body in the 21st century is respons(able) to mechanical developments and technological progress. Technology driven appendages and electronic devices become increasingly a part of our physical reality, creating a shift in our relationship with the material world. Through this interference with the natural state of the human organism how are we alienating ourselves from our bodies?

In response to these rapid changes the body adapts and compensates for the extension of our sensory organs into space and the potential numbing of our somatic responsiveness.

Several experimental works in progress examine the problem of presence/absence, the body, time and space. Dichotomies such as public/private, internal/external, real/virtual, and the imagination/material are deconstructed and reconstructed using the body and performance installation as a framework.