Media Extension and Embodiment By Livia Santos
Body as a Medium Auto percep3on: experiencing the world through one s own skin. The body becomes a necessary intermediary between the self and the world outside. How the body produces culture? To what extent culture produces a certain body? The body as a dynamic process, which is constantly being able to modify itself as it is not a sta3c object.
Body as a Canvas and Statement. Social Extensions The body as a medium is the source from which different cultural styles of embodiment emerge. Body can be a vehicle for desires. Body as a medium related to individual iden3ty. The medium of the body becomes the subject s own vehicle for communica3ng gender, age, class, religion, and so on. Wearing make up, wearing jewelry, cloths, hair style, tahooing and piercing, etc.
Technology as an Extension of the Body Enhancement of an ar3fact Replacement of an ar3fact Supplement of an ar3fact
Enhancement This is when a technological ar3fact enhances an already exis3ng func3on of the body and they work together towards engaging with one another. Example: Telescope which extends visual percep3on by teaming up with the eye. Thus, forming a func3onal unit consis3ng of telescopes plus eye, which turns out to be more powerful than the eye alone.
Supplement Example by Marshall McLuhan: clothes that protect and control the temperature of the body, thus, controlling func3ons already performed by the skin.
Replacement An ar3fact can replace a func3on of an organ from the human body. Ar3facts that affect our locomo3on: car, train, bus (therefore, someone won t be using its legs to walk from one loca3on to the other). Ar3facts that affect our memory: GPS, computers, telephones, calculators, etc. Such ar3facts not only replace certain func3ons but they can also alter many of our senses.
Body and the Media The media is not only an extension of our bodies, but it also transforms our sensory. How has the media you use affected your senses or thinking process? Has mass media opened up more possibili3es for female representa3ons? Or on the contrary, has it created more stereotypes? The body ego is (the projec3on of self as) image and, as such, is par3cularly responsive to the world of images, which for at least the past century have been created and manipulated by the media. Alter the body to fit standards propagated by the mass media, or to match their inner body expecta3ons to the exterior body images circulated by the media.
Altera@ons and Extensions of the Body. Cyborg (Cyberne@c Organism) Problem concerning the rela3on between construc3vism and freedom. As an example: Cosme3c Surgery.
Pallia@ve and Reconstruc@ve Surgeries Reconstruc3ve surgery following a burn or some other accident. For example: Pa3ents with cancer, pa3ents with any physical deformi3es and abnormali3es caused by trauma3c injuries, birth defects, developmental abnormali3es or some disease.
Aesthe@c Surgeries Elec3ve surgery, which concerns the removal of undesired features or the crea3on of desirable ones.
More than 23 million cosme3c surgical and nonsurgical procedures were performed worldwide in 2013.
Manipula@on of the Body Why treat the body as a means to impose an ideal upon one s face and body rather than using it to treat the body as site of experiment as both Orlan and Stelarc do?
The Body as a Site of Experiments: The Reincarna@on of Saint- Orlan The Reincarna3on of Saint- Orlan, a project that started in 1990, involves a series of plas3c surgeries through which the ar3st transformed herself into elements from famous pain3ngs and sculptures of women. As a part of her 'Carnal Art' manifesto, these works were filmed and broadcast in ins3tu3ons throughout the world, such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Sandra Gehring Gallery in New York. Orlan's goal in these surgeries is to acquire the ideal of female beauty as depicted by male ar3sts. When the surgeries are complete, she will have the chin of Bo`celli s Venus, the nose of Jean- Leon Gerome s Psyche, the lips of François Boucher s Europa, the eyes of Diana (as depicted in a 16th- century French School of Fontainebleu pain3ng), and the forehead of Leonardo da Vinci s Mona Lisa. Orlan picked these characters not for the canons of beauty they represent... but rather on account of the stories associated with them." Orlan chose Diana, because she is inferior to the gods and men, but is leader of the goddesses and women; Mona Lisa, because of the standard of beauty, or an3- beauty, that she represents; Psyche, because of the fragility and vulnerability within her soul; Venus, for carnal beauty; and Europa, for her adventurous outlook on the future.
The Body as a Site of Experiments: Stelarc Legendary Australian performance ar3st, Stelarc is known for going to extremes, from aggressive voluntary surgeries and robo3c third arms to flesh- hook suspensions and prosthe3cs. For more than four decades, he has used his body as a canvas for art on the very edge of human experience. Stelarc's ar3s3c strategy revolves around the idea of "enhancing the body" both in a physical and technical manner. His inten3on in both cases is to "express an idea with his direct experience." As an ar3st, you want to construct an interface or engineer an interface, he said. To actually experience it, and thereby ar3culate something meaningful about it. It s not simply specula3ng about a future.
Through Stelarc's work, we reach a second level of existence where the body becomes the object for physical and technical experiments in order to discover its limita3ons. When Stelarc speaks of the "obsolete body" he means that the body must overcome centuries of prejudices and begin to be considered as an extendible evolu3onary structure enhanced with the most disparate technologies, which are more precise, accurate and powerful: "the body lacks of modular design." "Technology is what defines the meaning of being human, it's part of being human." Especially living in the informa3on age, "the body is biologically inadequate." For Stelarc, "Electronic space becomes a medium of ac3on rather than informa3on.
Cyberculture Technology Humans have already become cyborgs through the use of pacemakers, contact lenses, hearing aids and prosthe3c limbs on the one hand, and of cars factories and ci3es on the other. Humans are no longer separable from the technologies that biologically and environmentally saturate our lives.
Cyberne@c Bodies Gaming: Interac@vity and Feedback Rela3on between user program and technology. No3ng that cyberne3c control works by elimina3ng possible ac3ons rather than promp3ng par3cular ones we realize that, the circuit serves to reduce the possibili3es of mo3on and ac3on and to amplify the remaining ac3ons through a delicate balance of feedback mechanisms: just enough posi3ve feedback to produce local changes, and enough nega3ve feedback to ensure global stability on the part of the games circuits. Cyberne@cally, then, interac@vity is a false descrip@on of a process of programmed elimina@on of possible ac@ons, not of crea@ng possibili@es of ac@ons. The cyberne3c view of gaming is also non- confronta3onal; but it is less collabora3ve than it is construc3vist that is, concerned with the forma3on of new circuits.
Killer Robots Fully autonomous weapons, also known as "killer robots," would be able to select and engage targets without human interven3on. Precursors to these weapons, such as armed drones, are being developed and deployed by na3ons including China, Israel, South Korea, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Post Humanism The body is simply no longer needed. The human body is no longer the basis for mind, and some scien3sts even conceive of a future in which the body will be len behind in favor of computa3onal or other mechanic embodiment. The body as material substance is linked to a machine, while its mental capaci3es are figured as programs.
Ques3ons Does technology as an extension of the body increases engagement of the body with its surroundings or does it replaces human ac3ons, thus, crea3ng a dependable body? Is the body becoming dependent on certain ar3facts? Is this beneficial or not? By relying on digital technologies as much as we do, are we losing our sensorial percep3ons? Has mass media opened up more possibili3es for female representa3ons? Or on the contrary, has it created more stereotypes?
Works Cited Atzori, Paolo. Woolford, Kirk. Stanford.edu. Extended- Body: Interview with Stelarc. Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany. N.d. Web. October 2014. Brey, P. 'Technology as Extension of Human Facul3es.' Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Technology. Research in Philosophy and Technology, vol 19. Ed. C. Mitcham. London: Elsevier/JAI Press. Datal, Geeta. Wired. For Extreme Ar3st Stelarc, Body Mods Hint at Humans Possible Future. May, 2 nd 2012. Web. October 2014. Human Rights Watch. Killer Robot. Web. October 2014. Lister, Mar3n. Dovey, Jon. Giddings, Seth. Grant, Iain. Kelly, Kieran. Mar3n Lister, Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant and Kieran Kelly. New Media: A CriCcal IntroducCon. 2 nd ed. Taylor & Francis, Inc, 2009. Print. Lu, Jiaxi. The Washington Post. Graphic: Brazil surpasses U.S. in the number of cosme3c surgeries performed in 2013. August 5 th, 2014. Web. October 2014. Thacker, Euegene. CriCcal Terms for Media Studies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637. 2010. Print. Wegenstein, BernadeHe. CriCcal Terms for Media Studies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637. 2010. Print.