Body degree zero anatomy of an interactive performance

Alan Dunning

Paul Woodrow

pp. 46-59

in: Randy Adams, Steve Gibson, Stefan Müller Arisona (eds), Transdisciplinary digital art. sound, vision and the new screen, Berlin, Springer, 2008

Abstract

Machine modes of representation are sometimes thought of as being supremely abstract. In practice, these modes counterpose abstraction and realism, artifice and naturalism, in ways that have problematized the artistic debate, destabilizing traditional and conventional ways of seeing and thinking. Similarly, the body has been positioned at the intersection of many discourses cultural, scientific and artistic and finds itself subject to de-configuration. The body has become a site of self-destruction no longer a stable physical entity but an indeterminate mass of fluctuating data in continual transformation that destroys itself even as it is remade. This paper examines these issues in the work of the art and science collaboration, the Einstein's Brain Project.