[ISEA95] Panel: Frances Dyson – Panel Statement

Panel Statement

Panel: Sharing Subjectivities

A prominent topic in discussions of cyberspace and new media technologies is the possibilities they offer for developing re-configured, ‘electronic’ subjectivities that allow the user to shed the social entrapments of the body in the physical world. In cyberspace, it is argued, the user has no body — therefore s/he has no necessary or preordained gender, race, class, “look” or even personality. For some, it is this aspect of cyberspace – together with its prosthetic, body-enhancing potential — that is the most liberating. For others it raises questions about the consequences of disembodiment in general. Can a purely electronic presence escape the determinations currently organized around the various matrix of power-permeating post­industrial culture? When the body, as emitter of signs, is removed, are there other signs which take the body’s place? And, how will the electronic “body” be represented – will it conform to the usual representations of physical bodies, or will an entirely new conception of corporeality and presence be formulated?

  • Dr. Frances Dyson (Australia) is a practicing media artist and theorist with specialties in sound and new media. Her audio artwork has been aired internationally, and she has exhibited installation works in North America, Australia and Japan. Many of her works have been commissioned and aired by the Listening Room, ABC Radio, and recent sound art can be heard on the CD Ding Dong Deluxe, (Avatar), Quebec. Dyson has also published and lectured widely in Australia and overseas in the field of media arts criticism, and is currently researching issues related to arts practice and new media technologies. She has recently contributed to Immersed in Technology (Banff Centre/MIT Press, forthcoming), Leonardo Music Journal, 21 C, and Critical Issues in Electronic Media (ed. Simon Penny, SUNY Press).