075

Authors:

 Gilpin, Heidi.

Title:

 " Excavating Knowledge of the Body "

Keywords:

 corporeal knowledge, proprioception, movement performance, dynamism, interactivity

Abstract:

 We view the world through various distinct technological and natural processes of perception. Most of these processes are currently assisted by technology in such profound ways that our perceptive abilities are being developed, enhanced, and/or distracted at the neuronal level. This condition of perception represents, at least in some sense, a flight from the body, a familiar and central problem of particularly western consciousness.

What constitutes corporeal knowledge, our knowledge of the body, of our bodies? What would it mean to address our complex yet fairly unexcavated knowledge of the body directly in the interactive and performative environments and events that we create with new media technologies? To pay attention to body-knowledge is to say that we are going to pay attention to our own perception. This implies that we will take responsibility for ourselves, instead of projecting ourselves into the role of hero/ine of the narrative/game, for example, and distancing ourselves from experience (bodily and other).

In order to explore some of these issues, this paper will address various forms of performance in the digital realm, and examine the theoretical issues that performance raises for new media technologies. Particular attention will be paid to what the author has elsewhere termed "movement performance," in which interactivity and movement (between performer and machine, between performer and audience, and/or between machine and audience) play a significant part. Work by selected performers, performance artists, and new media artists, all of which directly confront issues of corporeal knowledge and technology, will be examined and discussed in order to expose the workings and non-workings of bodily consciousness in performative contexts for digital technologies. Theoretical writings from the fields of neurobiology, psychoanalysis, physics, cultural studies, and performance studies will inform the approach. The hope here, is that by critically examining various current forms of digital performance, we will become more aware of the possibilities of proprioception (the body's sense of itself) and dynamism as tools for the creation and perception of digital practices and products, and begin to perceive other ways and forms of creating human-machine interfaces through the body and through bodily knowledge.
Gilpin, Heidi. tosnow@hkstar.com University of Hong Kong is Associate Professor of digital culture, performance studies, and cultural theory in the Department of Comparative Literature, and Director of the newly established Center for Digital Culture at the University of Hong Kong. She serves on the editorial board of Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, and lectures and publishes internationally on cultural studies in performance, with an emphasis on issues of bodily practice, critical theory, new media technologies, and architecture. Since 1989, Gilpin has worked as the Dramaturg (Conceptual Author) of William Forsythe and the Frankfurt Ballet, most recently on a series of performance productions involving interactive technologies. She has also served as co-founder and director of the Institute for New Dramaturgy, presenting multidisciplinary workshops and colloquia on issues of composition in various locations in Eastern and Western Europe. For the opening of the ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany in October 1997, Gilpin created an interactive performance piece entitled My Space - Your Place. She is currently completing a book about trauma and performance, and editing an anthology about digital technologies and bodily perception.