[ISEA96] Panel : Maria N. Stukoff – WORLD, BODY, TIME AND SPACE

Panel Statement

Panel:  Space, Time, Body, World

Intro

I must admit that I am very surprised to see you all here at this conference, present and in person. To be specific: Carrying your burdensome flesh all the way to this conference to be seen, heard and entertained. But it seems a little odd, if not perverse to attend this conference that is to evaluate and display a reality of Cyberspace and its surrounding applications, such as the Internet. Why are we not at home enjoying our own cooking and instead, connecting our brains into the computer matrix as it has been suggested at previous conferences. The truth of the matter is, that we are all still very much at home in our bodies, we like to show It off and collect a variety of feel good stimulation. The art of teleconferencing between international ports and exhibiting art work in virtual galleries still does not provide us with the same sense of
experience as some may like to speculate upon. Far too often it has been suggested that a physical body (I presume the Human Body is signified here) has no signrficance in this computer matrix only the mental body can travel along the wires. The body of flesh left outside while our “otherself” can travel the inner wonders of the computer space. Increasingly the old metaphor of the ‘split body’ exercise and announcements of transmuting and neo-evolutionary human beings are ambivalently adopted to describe a revolutionary evolution of Humans. A future of post human ethics and the neo human technocrats. And let me query at this point the
assumption that we as Humans foster some infinity with technological appliances which propels the human evolutionary journey into the virtual domain?!

  • Maria Stukoff is an independent artist working with computer animated environments and Iive performance.

Full text p.155-156