Webliography

Guiding Question: ‘Why should our bodies end at the skin?’ asks Donna Haraway. Discuss the idea of skin in relation to how we might imagine our future embodiment.

Bernier, Deric, “Electric Dreams” Data Fortress 2020 http://datafortress2020.110mb.com/ab/electricdreams.html (accessed 7 September 2010)

Electric Dreams is a fictional cybernetics installation clinic. The website is divided into several sections including: Cybernetic Limbs, Hand, Feet and Options; Cranial Options, Cyberoptics and Neuralware; Body Options and Replacement Organs; and Surgery, Maintenance and Medical Information. The images used on all the pages are captivating and are from a variety of sources from popular culture, including popular films and various artists. It envisions enhancing the body by either replacing body parts or covering or adding to them, acting as an extension of the skin, as they become a part of your bodily functions, with options of built in miniature televisions and cyber weapons, which you have control over, as you do over of your ‘natural’ body. Despite being fictional, by using images from films and various artists (noted at the bottom of each page) we can see that these are images that people are already conjuring and hence researching and aiming towards. Is this how we imagine our future? It may not be too long before this fictional clinic becomes a reality.

There is no indication of the age of the website other than the films and images included; leading me to believe it is fairly recent.

Biocca, Frank, (1997), “The Cyborg’s Dilemma: Embodiment in Virtual Environments”, http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol3/issue2/biocca2.html (accessed 6 September 2010)

This is a scholarly article written by Dr. Frank Biocca from the University of Michigan. It is a little older than the others, but I think that the issues raised in it have become more manifest in recent years. Biocca explores how virtual reality interfaces are progressively embodying the user. It is concerned with how virtual environments interact with the minds of users adapt to or alter cognitive processes. He connects the idea of ‘presence’ with embodiment, more specifically ‘telepresence,’ the sense of transportation to a ‘place’ created by the media, and the sensation of being in a place other than where your body is physically located. We can sometimes feel as if we have been transported to a virtual world, as if we are outside of our bodies because we feel as if we really are ‘there’. Towards the end Biocca focuses on the concept of the avatar as a virtual representation of ourselves, and how this creates us as having two bodies instead of just one, with our minds being somewhere inbetween. As a result we become confused as to which body our identity lies in, our virtual or physical ones.

Hartmann, Björn, Klemmer, Scott R., & Takayama, Leila, (2006), “How Bodies Matter: Five Themes for Interaction Design”, http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/2006/HowBodiesMatter-DIS2006.pdf (accessed 7 September 2010)

Hartmann et al look at ubiquitous computing, virtual representations and how our bodies are becoming enveloped by them, as they become part of our embodiment and ask why? Why are we trying to replace the physical world? They look at the body, and the capabilities that it has. Our bodies play a central role in shaping human experience in the world, understanding of the world, and interaction with the world. A big part of human experience is risk, which technologies of telepresence and digital design tools often act to minimalise or eliminate. If we take for example flight simulators, there is no risk involved, but we supposedly get the same sensations as if we were really flying. But it is the risk that brings the adrenalin, so the experience is not the same. We can’t create the sensory richness of the real thing. With the challenges of risk come opportunities for more trusting, committed, responsible, and focused interactions in both social and individual activities. At work do we work better with having someone to work with and talk to, or is it easier to be sent an email? Which is more engaging? Although quite basic in places, this scholarly article highlights the beauty and richness of the bodies and the world that we already inhibit.

Schick, Lea & Malmborg, Lone, (2009), “Unfolding and Refolding Embodiment into the Landscape of Ubiquitous Computing” UC Irvine: Digital Arts and Culture 2009, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/7t5741s0 (accessed 6 September 2010)

This article is easily distinguishable as extremely scholarly, as both authors are affiliated with the University of Copenhagen, and the article has been published on a University of California website. They have used other scholarly research in their article and the article has been peer-reviewed. Being written in 2009, it is also very up to date. It is in places quite comprehensive and difficult to understand but I did manage to pick out a few points from it.

Schick and Lone reject the idea of the body becoming obsolete. Instead they comment on the skin ‘unfolding’ into the technological environment so that we become a part of it, and it too becomes a part of us. They suggest that embodiment cannot end at the skin because we are inseparable from technology and we live through it. They argue that computing has become decentralised and has merged into our physical surroundings and has thus become pervasive. I thought the most profound point they made was that the most profound technologies are those that disappear, because when they disappear we are freed to use them without thinking. The body becomes submerged, making it the centre of technologies. Through the body’s senses, it expands and unfolds into the world, creating feedback-loops of senses and responses, with our bodies enveloping these technologies.

Wired Magazine, “I, Robot”, (2000) Wired http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.02/full.html (accessed 8 September 2010)

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this cover of Wired Magazine is portraying much about how we perceive our bodies, skin and our becoming cyborgs. Wired is a highly esteemed magazine, often showing the newest theories and putting them into a real life context. From this image and its caption, we are being lead to believe that humans are beginning to turn into robots or cyborgs. However, even though we can see ourselves progressively becoming cyborgs, I believe that as human beings, it is not something we like to admit. We like the idea of being human and are obsessed with the preservation of our race, but we cannot deny that we are becoming more and more artificial with various implants in our bodies such as pacemakers, titanium hip replacements, breast implants, hearing aids, and artificial organs. In this image Kevin Warwick, has had an electronic chip implanted in his arm and the shaded rectangle over his arm acts to show us that it has been hidden underneath his skin. The skin is human and without it we would fail to be worthy of the term and hence we try to hide our cyborg natures’ beneath the skin, to maintain the veneer of ‘humanness’.