Sharing Subjectivities: Exploring new concepts of Interface Design Panel Statement

Symposium:

• ISEA95: Sixth International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Sharing Subjectivities: Exploring new concepts of Interface Design

• Sharing Subjectivities: Exploring new concepts of Interface Design Panel Statement

• Frances Dyson

Venue(s):

• Hôtel Le Méridien, Montreal, Canada

• 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?

Category:

• Panel