Semiotic Flesh: Information and the Human Body

3. Flesh and Metal: Reconfiguring the Mindbody in Virtual Environments

52 WALTER CHAPIN SIMPSON CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES Short Studies .. - - ., Flesh and Metal: Reconfiguring the Mindbody in Virtual Environments N. Katherine Hayles In my recent book How We Became Posthuman, I struggled to avoid the Cartesian mind/ body split by making a distinction between the body and embodiment. But having made the analytical distinction between the body and embodiment, I could not escape the clay of dualistic thinking that clung to me regardless of how strenuously I tried to avoid it. In this essay, rather than beginning dualistically with body and embodiment, I propose instead to focus on the idea of relation and posit it as the dynamic flux from which both the body and embodiment emerge. In this view embodiment and the body are emergent phenomena arising from the dynamic flux that we try to understand analytically by parsing it into such concepts as biology and culture, evolution and technology. These categories always come after the fact, however, emerging from a flux too complex, interactive, and holistic to be grasped as a thing in itself. To signify this emergent quality of the body and embodiment, I will adopt the term proposed by Mark Hansen to denote a similar unity, the mindbody.! My argument further implies that these co-evolutionary dynamics are not only abstract propositions grasped by the conscious mind but also emergent dynamic processes actualized through interactions with the environment. And here there is a problem. Especially in times of rapid technological innovation, there are many gaps and discontinuities between abstract concepts of the body, experiences of embodiment, and the dynamic interactions with the flux ofwhich these are enculturated expressions. The environment changes and the flux shifts in correlated systemic and organized ways, but it takes time, thought, and experience for these changes to be registered in the mindbody. Bridging these gaps and connecting these discontinuities is the task taken on by the three virtual reality artworks discussed here: Traces by Simon Penny and his collaborators, Einstein sBrain by Alan Dunning, Paul Woodrow, and their collaborators, and N0time by Victoria Vesna and her collaborators. 52 WALTER CHAPIN SIMPSON CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES Short Studies Flesh and Metal: Reconfiguring the Mindbody in Virtual Environments N. Katherine Hayles In my recent book How we Became Posthuman, I struggled to avoid the Cartesian mind/ body split by making a distinction between the body and embodiment. But having made the analytical distinction between the body and embodiment, I could not escape the clay of dualistic thinking that clung to me regardless of how strenuously I tried to avoid it. In this essay, rather than beginning dualistically with body and embodiment, I propose instead to focus on the idea of relation and posit it as the dynamic flux from which both the body and embodiment emerge. In this view embodiment and the body are emergent phenomena arising from the dynamic flux that we try to understand analytically by parsing it into such concepts as biology and culture, evolution and technology. These categories always come after the fact, however, emerging from a flux too complex, interactive, and holistic to be grasped as a thing in itself. To signify this emergent quality of the body and embodiment, I will adopt the term proposed by Mark Hansen to denote a similar unity, the mindbody.l My argument further implies that these co-evolutionary dynamics are not only abstract propositions grasped by the conscious mind but also emergent dynamic processes actualized through interactions with the environment. And here there is a problem. Especially in times of rapid technological innovation, there are many gaps and discontinuities between abstract concepts of the body, experiences of embodiment, and the dynamic interactions with the flux ofwhich these are enculturated expressions. The environment changes and the flux shifts in correlated systemic and organized ways, but it takes time, thought, and experience for these changes to be registered in the mindbody. Bridging these gaps and connecting these discontinuities is the task taken on by the three virtual reality artworks discussed here: Traces by Simon Penny and his collaborators, Einstein S Brain by Alan Dunning, Paul Woodrow, and their collaborators, and N0time by Victoria Vesna and her collaborators. SEMIOTIC FLESH I Flesh and Metal If art not only teaches us to understand our experiences in new ways but actually changes experience itself, these artworks engage us in ways that make vividly real the emergence of ideas of the body and experiences of embodiment from our interactions with increasingly information-rich environments. They teach us...