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The Implicit Body as Performance: c stra b
Analyzing Interactive Art a do ar
Nathaniel Stern leon
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This paper puts contemporary theories of embodiment and performance in the service of interactive arts criticism. Rather than focusing on vision, atching viewer-participants interact with derstandings of “the body” (as a structure or signification, the W author proposes that we explic- David Rokeby’s installation Very Nervous System may lead one static and explicit “thing”) be ap- itly examine bodies-in-relation, to conclude that they are dancing erratically to a strange sonic plied. As Marilyn Strathern warns, interaction as performance, composition; they are actually creating these sounds in his it would be a mistake to think we and “being” as “being-with.” He real-time, response-driven environment. Here the audience know what a body is when we see presents four concrete areas moves, and is moved, to make music [1]. Similarly, contribu- one [4]. Rather, interactive art, qua of concentration for analyzing tors’ movements in Camille Utterback’s Untitled 6 generate inter-active, must be examined with the category of interactive art. The author also examines how animated responses that cumulatively interact with each other the moving body-in-relation; body such work amplifies subjects over time. Their activity complexly layers space, line and color and world must be understood as and objects as always already to create evocative and painterly compositions. A “continual implicit in one another. implicated across one another. flow of unique and fleeting moments,” infolding and unfold- ing, sensual and contemplative, it is akin to the “experience Embodiment as of embodied existence itself” [2] (Color Plate D). Likewise elational in Mathieu Briand’s series of “systems,” spectator-performers R literally share, swap and interfere with each other’s percep- In his Parables for the Virtual, contemporary philosopher Brian tion. Each participant wears a custom headset outfitted with Massumi implores us to put “movement, sensation, and quali- cameras, screens, microphones and earpieces. Here we see ties of experience” back into our understandings of embodi- and hear what people in other times and spaces are looking ment. “Our entire vocabulary” [5], he says, “has derived from at and listening to, while they simultaneously experience and theories of signification that are still wedded to structure even respond to the sights and sounds picked up from our own across irreconcilable differences” [6]. He doesn’t wish to undo body’s “viewpoint.” Briand’s enfleshed network invites us to the important work of cultural studies’ linguistic model for encounter bodiliness as interactive and relational [3]. understanding race, gender, class or other forms of identifica- Artists such as Rokeby, Utterback and Briand are more tion, but hopes to rather engage with movement and “continu- interested in how we move than in what we see. Their instal- ity.” Following Gilles Deleuze, who followed Bergson, Massumi lations are not objects to be perceived but relations to be per- points out, “When a body is in motion, it does not coincide formed. The contemporary artist-researchers who create what with itself. It coincides with its own transition: its own varia- is called interactive art are concerned with how interactivity tion” [7]. Here the body is not a “known” structure, but a “state itself “matters,” a relatively new concept in artistic creativity. of invention” [8], an “accumulation of relative perspectives Here, physical action literally and figuratively becomes the and the passages between them . . . retaining and combining “work” that is the “work of art.” Artwork and audience, action past movements” [9], continuously “infolded” [10] with “cod- and perception, body and world, are each and always already ing and codification” [11]. implicated across all others. What this means is that they are Massumi has an understanding of embodiment as relational, collaboratively enacted, dispersed, entwined, differentiated emergent and incipient: topological but not plottable. In other and shared. In this way, interactive installations exceed extant words, the body is processual; it is constituted in and of its ac- models for understanding art, which almost exclusively rely tivities with the world around it. The body, this paper argues, on signs, vision or form. is performed. A new approach to analyzing interactive art cannot be- gin with language, images or objects; nor can everyday un- The Pre-Formed and the Per-Formed Richard Schechner is largely credited with expanding our un- derstandings of performance, using a combination of anthro-
Nathaniel Stern (artist, educator), 2847 N. Farwell Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53211, U.S.A. pology, cultural theory, postmodern reflection and his practice E-mail:
©2011 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 233–238, 2011 233
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v “reducible to terms independent of its which the subject (viewer-participant) the projections we might look at, the r formation” [13]. and object (software and/or installation) moving parts we witness or the sounds Se
ts In a study of digital art inter-actions, are composed of their interrelations. An we might hear within the gallery space. c Nicole Ridgway builds on these foun- approach to analyzing such art should Inter-activity is understood to be enac- dations, using the “philosophical focus on performance and activity. tion, practice, affect, (the) “work.” How stra tradition[s] of . . . relation and emer- are audiences, the framework asks, liter-
do Ab gence” to bring new light to perfor- ally and physically “moved”? The case The Implicit Body ar mance. She says that it is not liminal studies catalog, through detailed ac- and “‘in’ the between, but rather ‘of’ Framework counts from life or video documentation, eon L the relation.” Ridgway follows the work The framework I propose here posits a the careful breathing, fast-paced running of Gilles Deleuze and Elizabeth Grosz concentration on four key areas when an- and awkward grasping, the intricate ges- to juxtapose pre-formism—the already alyzing a given work: artistic inquiry and tures of fingers, mouths and toes angling preformed or completely given (rather process; art work description; inter-activ- to trigger sensors, the extravagant leaps than produced)—with per-formance—“a ity; and relationality. While traditional and dances of bodies making music taking place, something in process and, readings of digital art and new media across space, the quiet stutters and stares by definition, unfinished.” Per-formance, most often stop after the first two areas that attempt to elicit the perfect union says Ridgway, “inaugurates not enacts.” of concentration, I argue, it is the latter with and response from a software or in- So interaction “is not [then] a meeting of two that account for the far-reaching po- stallation as time goes on. two extant essences, but a movement and tential of interactive art [17]. This approach differs from the afore- unfolding of the [relation] that is always mentioned, and credit-worthy, Muller supplementary and incomplete” [14]. Artistic Inquiry and Process and Jones documentation of interac- Embodiment, I contend, is inter- How artists approach their work—cri- tive artworks through interviews in that action. Bodies only come into being tique what it is doing and reapply their implicit body case studies examine em- through how they inter-act and relate. In understanding of the piece while it is bodied action rather than accounts of his book, Being Singular Plural, Jean-Luc still in production—obviously affects our how such works are experienced. My Nancy avers that “being” is always “being- readings of it. How artists contextualize own young daughter, for example, often with” [15]. Here I assert that “body” is their work in a gallery, title it and write tries unfamiliar food and exclaims, “deli- always “embodied-with.” It is per-formed about it on the wall description in the cious!” in order to impress me with her and co-emergent with its surroundings. gallery and in the catalog or on their cultured palate, while her facial expres- And interactive installations have the po- web site all feed back into how we un- sions and body language tell a far differ- tential to reconfigure action and percep- derstand, interact and engage with the ent story. Here, the goal is to articulate, tion in ways that amplify this incipient work. These are thus presented as part as much as is possible, movement (or the and interactive “bodiliness.” of the implicit body framework, through lack thereof) before it is qualified. While analyzing texts by, and interviews with, the process of embodiment itself resists the artists. being captured or presented in text or ntervening in the I images, it is precisely this resistance that Body: From the Explicit Artwork Description the implicit body framework attempts to to the Implicit The artwork description is a detailed address. This allows for intricate analyses Performance studies scholar Rebecca description of the piece—what it looks of how artwork and audience, body and Schneider argued that performance art and sounds and feels like, how it responds world, co-emerge. featuring “explicit bodies” stages and to us in the gallery or performance space. makes explicit (in Latin: unfolds) the As Lizzie Muller and Caitlin Jones point Relationality social inscriptions on, and attributed to, out, the intentions of artists and experi- The implicit body framework also en- the body. Work by artists such as Karen ences of viewers may differ greatly in the deavors to analyze how we relate—in, of Finley and VALIE EXPORT, Schneider media art domain and so this section may and as these interactions. While interac- maintains, “renders the symbolic [as] lit- include documentation shot and written tion and performance may be insepara- eral” in order to intervene in and “pose by others—including the critic or audi- ble from relationality and co-emergence, a threat [to] structures of comprehensi- ence—or even edited interviews with in- in the implicit body framework they are bility” [16]. teractors [18]. heuristically separated and given equal In work by artists like Rokeby, Utter- measure so as to ensure a concentration back and Briand, I maintain, the body of Inter-activity on both our literal, physical movements the viewer is unfinished and implicated Most writing on interactive art will ex- and on what and how they per-form. In (in Latin: infolded). Such work engages plain that a given piece is interactive his discussion of Stelarc’s work, Massumi not with the body as sign or structure, but and how it is interactive but not how we avers that the artist is able to physically with a “continuous” embodiment. Rather interact. The implicit body framework, on experience ideas, to encounter what he than staging an explicit body in perfor- the other hand, explicates participants’ calls “sensible concepts.” Massumi says mance as an attempt to unfold its inscrip- physical actions, enabling critical read- that sensible concepts do not “pre-exist” tions, interactive art engages an implicit ings of that which is per-formed: Our lit- their own “performance”; they are rather body as performance. It has the radical eral movements over time and in space, “manifested” through their own “physi- capacity to enhance, disrupt, intervene our affect, movement and sensation are cal expression” [19]. The implicit body in and alter experience and action in described in detail as the “work”—the in interactive art, I would argue, enables ways that call attention to our infolding, work of art and the work of embodiment. viewer-participants—not just perfor- embodying and co-emergent relation- In implicit body case studies, the ac- mance artists—to enact and explore such ships with our surroundings. The “work” tual (and actualizing) “activity” of inter- corporeal-conceptual relations. is an enduring and per-formed event in activity is genuinely given priority over The implicit body framework’s fourth
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area of concentration asks, What ideas Thus Utterback’s Untitled 6 might, for active artwork and environment that uses v r e
or concepts are “embodied-with” inter- example, be read through what I call the four infrared video cameras and custom s
active art? How, in our activities and per- Body-Language thematic, which studies computer vision software to construct a ts formance, do we sensibly conceive of, the co-emergent relationships between 3D volumetric model of its participants, c for example, architecture or meaning- the performance of embodiment and the who interact within a Cave Automatic stra b
making or society? How are they infolded process of meaning-making. When we in- Virtual Environment (CAVE) [20] (Fig. a teract with her work, our enfleshed writ- into, and formed by, the body and one 1). The CAVE contains projections of do
another? What do we learn about em- ing, drawing, painting and making marks 3D videos across three walls, the ceiling ar bodiment and interactivity through these are not inscriptions to be read, but activi- and floor that respond to a participant’s
continuous relationships? ties with which we sensibly conceive. Our movement in real time. The active per- leon Here I am arguing for, and beginning, bodies and her software together create formers in Traces see floating “images” as an ongoing list of implicit body “themat- an ongoing composition, a relational 3D moving sculptures in the immediate ics,” relational couplings between em- space in which we “make sense.” space around them. This interface invites bodiment and various concepts often Since bodies co-emerge not only with a moving, affective and sensual sensori- found in contemporary interactive art. meaning but also with space (flesh- motor body into the interactive experi- Thematics name, and attempt to criti- space), with society (social-anatomies) ence of virtual reality. It is important to cally engage with, the sensible concepts and with a plurality of other sensible con- note here just how enveloping a CAVE, that emerge from our interactions with cepts, the thematic approach presented and the interaction in Traces, really is. such work. I choose the word “thematic” here calls for multiple readings of any Many media theorists over the last de- because it is more reflective of a sensible given interactive artwork. Each itera- cade have analyzed Traces, most notably concept: It is not only a noun, but also tive reading calls for specificity—what, Mark B.N. Hansen and N. Katherine Hay- a potential adjective or adverb, and can precisely, is emerging with the body?— les [21]. What follows is a truncated case thus always be in relation to activity. The- within a collection of co-emergent cat- study using the implicit body framework, matics differ from traditional conceptu- egories in order to explore relationality, in order to show how it might add to on- ally based themes in that they aim to embodiment and interactivity in more going discussions about interactive art. investigate the materiality and form of our depth. There are three modes of interaction relationality; thematics require (inter-) in Traces, where each leads into the next. activity. Every thematic is both a theme In the first, “passive” trace, every move- and an action, a careful reading of the A Case in Point ment, small or sweeping, draws real-time “with” of the incorporating practices we Simon Penny and his collaborators’ lilac-colored “voxels” (volumetric pixels) perform and embody with interactive art. Traces (1999) is a fully immersive inter- that slowly fade to nothingness, like trails
Fig. 1. Simon Penny, renderings, screen shots and documentation of performers inside Simon Penny’s Traces, CAVE installation, 1999 (in its three modes) and using the Traces Vision System in other installations. (© Simon Penny. Layout: Nathaniel Stern.)
Stern, The Implicit Body as Performance 235
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v of ephemeral bricks behind each flick- evolution. He goes on to argue that con- that behave independently of their hu- r ering action. These traces of our bodies temporary artists’ “varied use of digital man interlocutors.” This “performance,” Se
ts look and feel like “volumetric and spatial- media has pointed the way toward an she goes on, is “registered by the user c acoustic residues of user movement that introjection of technics into embodi- visually and also kinesthetically as she slowly decay” [22]. Penny describes this ment” [26]. In other words, digital art moves energetically within the space to stra interaction as dancing a sculpture. When enables us to bring and incorporate the generate the entities of the Active and surrounding world, the technologically Behaving Traces.” It “makes vividly clear
do Ab the software crosses into its “active” trace
ar mode, the small cubic voxels no longer mediated world, into our processual that the simulated entities she calls “her fade at a standard rate. Instead, partici- embodiment—what he calls, following body” and the “trace” are emergent phe- eon L pants’ movements seed 3D cellular au- Merleau-Ponty, the body-schema. nomena arising from their dynamic and tomata characteristics: Each voxel may Hansen asserts that Traces “demon- creative interactions.” Hayles contends shift to any number of varying colors, for strates that the disclosive power of the that Traces “enacts a borderland where any amount of time, before it disappears. body schema is an essentially techni- the boundaries of the self diffuse into the In the final, “behaving” trace, perfor- cal power” and that, “in the end, it immediate environment and then differ- mances in the CAVE initiate animal-like emerges only through the technology entiate into independent agents” [31]. flying statuettes that move in Reynolds that makes it possible in the first place.” Hayles argues that flocking patterns in and around the Traces allows us to literally encounter a viewer. These user-spawned 3D anima- “body-in-code” in that our body-image (“self- Traces bespeaks the playful and creative tions—playfully called Chinese dragons representation”) is “indiscernible from possibilities of a body with fuzzy bound- aries, experiences of embodiment that by the artists because of their segmented a technically generated body schema” transform and evolve through time, spherical appearance—follow complex, (“enactive spatialization”). He argues connections to intelligent machines interactive and generative behaviors that the difference between the two that enact the human-machine bound- that make them swoop and flock and “has been entirely effaced.” Our experi- ary as mutual emergence, and the joy that comes when we realize we are not tease. ence of our “body proper” does not, in isolated from the flux but rather enact Traces responds to our bodies, but over other words, take the form of a repre- our mind-bodies through our deep and time we must also be more responsive to sentational image but rather “emerges continuous communion with it [32]. it. What begins as embodied exploration through the representative function of the becomes a physical investment in inter- data of body movement” [27]. Hansen For Hayles, body and world co-emerge, active and generative creation through in fact goes so far as to say that in Traces, and like Hansen she asserts that Traces flicks and jabs, running and jumping, as in the world at large, “the entire body supports an understanding of the body- swiping and diving. A thematic read- schema—the coupling of body proper schema, of embodiment, of relationality ing similar to that of Utterback’s work, and environment—is generated by the and emergence. above, suggests that there is a dialogue— technical system” [28]. Here I argue that My approach to embodiment and in- what Jean-Luc Nancy [23] might call a despite his careful reasoning around the teractivity is itself not dissimilar to the corpus—between Body and Language. co-evolution of body and technology/ one proposed in Hayles’s text, and im- These two things (which are precisely code, Hansen winds up privileging the plicit body thematics are not completely not things) are per-formed, performa- latter. unlike her “modes of relation.” However, tively given both material and meaning, In Hayles’s nuanced and self-critical I maintain that both Hayles and Hansen together. treatise on relationality and the co- start with a distinct artwork/technology Hansen and Hayles [24] often turn emergence of technology/signification and discrete participant before refigur- to art in order to grow their technology- with the body, she argues that interac- ing their inter-active dynamics. I am based philosophies of embodiment. In tive artworks are spaces that “make vividly not arguing for an extant body that can counterpoint, I am asking for an un- real the emergence of ideas of the body “diffuse” into its environment and then derstanding of philosophy and art, of and experiences of embodiment.” Hayles “differentiate” again, an embodied and embodiment and interactivity, together. puts forward three “modes of relation” artful “communion” or “connection” The subtle difference is in the articula- for interrogating such work: “relation of with, for example, the “boundary” of tion: I treat art and philosophy, like body mindbody to the immediate surround- technology—words that unfortunately and world, as transductions of, and as ings,” which she calls enactment; “rela- suggest the two as a priori, despite Hay- co-emergent with, one another. This ap- tion between mindbody and world,” or les’s argument for “mutual emergence” proach better enables the language and perception; and “relationality as cultural [33]. meaning and concepts in and with Traces construction,” or enculturation [29]. My approach takes the per-formance to manifest from its inherent coupling Hayles states that these “by no means of body and world and technology to- with embodied enaction. Here the frame- exhaust the ways in which relationality gether as given. Here technology and work—which is informed and supported brings the mindbody and the world into the artwork are not acting as catalysts by Hansen’s and Hayles’s theories—of- the realm of human experience, [but] or glue that entwine two extant entities. fers insight into how Traces, amongst they are capacious enough in their dif- Body and world are not, I argue, pre- other embodied performances, amplifies ferences to convey a sense of what is at formed things. Rather, interactive art and helps us better understand the rela- stake in shifting the focus from entity to intervenes into entwined relationships tion of flesh and discourse [25]. relation” [30]. that are always already emerging, which One of Hansen’s key arguments in Bod- Hayles places Traces within her mode are necessary—and in fact the very pre- ies in Code is that humanity and technol- of “enactment”: the relation of “mind- condition—for being(-with). Interactive ogy evolve together. He says that human body” to its immediate surroundings. art such as Traces creates potentialized embodiment and experience—which She states that Traces “occupies a middle contexts that amplify the fundamentally are, he asserts, always technically medi- ground between avatars that mirror the relational process of embodiment. ated—are the primary factors in our user’s motions and autonomous agents The implicit body framework thus
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puts emphasis on movement, on inter- the body, emerge from the (outside/in- 2. Camille Utterback, utterback.com/untitled5.html>. e action itself. It first studies how people side) space of relationality, and together s 3. Evelyne Jouanno and Mathieu Briand. “Mathieu literally move and are moved and then they produce meaning. ts iterates through a multiplicity of poten- The relationship that the work of Briand. Hacking Contemporary Reality (Interview),” c Flash Art, October 2004, 114–116. tial relations and co-emergences within Traces frames is between/with, explicit stra 4. Marilyn Strathern, “One-Legged Gender,” Lucien b that movement. Implicit body thematics and implicit, construction and consti- a tution, body and sign. Its significations Taylor (ed). Visualizing Theory: Selected Essays from are not merely “modes of relation” but VAR, 1990–1994 (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. do sensible concepts that are themselves and symbols are inscribed, in real time, 242–251. ar emergent and in relation; they are used through our incorporating practices and 5. Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, to examine an embodied investigation of simultaneously take on a symbolic life of Affect, Sensation (Durham: Duke University Press, leon a continuous embodiment “with” x (with their own, informing how we perform 2002), p. 4. x, with x, with x, ad infinitum). before, during and thereafter. Acting 6. Massumi [5] p. 27. In the passive trace, performers tend together, body and language emerge toward slow investigative gestures: swoop- together, in what Nancy would call “ex- 7. Massumi [5] pp. 4–5. ing arms, a dip and wave-making slip of scription” [37]. We come to sense, to 8. Massumi [5] p. 103. the leg, explorations of the magical fades mean, to be-with. 9. Massumi [5] p. 57. of the voxels in their avatars. In the ac- How does such a reading add to the tive trace, when images begin taking discourse of interactive art? 10. Massumi [5] p. 98. on characteristics of their own, viewers’ First and foremost, the implicit body 11. Massumi [5] p. 83. performances become more erratic; they framework’s detailed descriptions of in- try to control the images around them teraction place emphasis on movement 12. Richard Schechner, Essays on performance theory 1970–1976 (New York: Drama Book Specialists, by ineffectually waving them away, slow- itself. Here, interaction is not a concept 1977), p. 1. ing their movements then unexpectedly behind the work but the activity and per- 13. See Phillip Zarrilli, “Review: Toward a Definition lashing out, flailing and failing at their formance of the work-with-us. Traces, in of Performance Studies” Theatre Journal, Vol. 38, attempts to have exacting control over other words, does not support a philoso- No. 3, 372–376 and No. 4, p. 493–496 (1986) and the environment/embodiment/3D im- phy of embodiment, as Hansen and Hay- Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduc- tion (New York: Routledge, 2002). age (and its meaning). In the behaving les implicitly aver, but rather shows how trace, they tend to stop trying to control the work exscribes both embodiment 14. Nicole Ridgway, “In Excess of the Already Con- stituted: Interaction as Performance,” Owen Kelly everything in the space but instead flick and (its/our) philosophy. (ed), New Media (Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, Forth- and kick their arms and legs in short mo- Second, the implicit body framework coming). Hyphen added for emphasis; in Ridgway’s tions, in order at least to command the does not assume a singular-yet-coupled original text, this is written as performance. birth of Chinese dragons and engage in emergence as given. Following the 15. Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, Translated an ongoing play. above thematic understanding of Traces, by Anne O’Byrne and Robert Richardson (Stanford, In the final interactive mode, “user I would utilize the same (though per- CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 27. body movements spawn” inter-active haps extended) detailed descriptions 16. Rebecca Schneider, The Explicit Body in Perfor- agents that are somewhat “autonomous” of activity in order to re-read the work mance (London: Routledge, 1997) pp. 1–3. [34], “cultural artifacts that exhibit” their several times over. A multiplicity of sen- 17. The full-length manuscript I am currently work- own “behavior” [35]. Said behaviors sible concepts are per-formed with Traces, ing on, tentatively titled The Implicit Body in Interactive Art: Performance, Embodiment, and Media, makes this respond to participants’ position and and each deserves explicit attention. Ev- argument at length, and provides in-depth analyses movements in space, and in turn their ery iterative reading deepens our under- of work utilizing the framework it proposes. This movements respond to these images: standings of the piece, of interaction, of grows out of my doctoral research, which can be viewed at the Trinity College Dublin library. shorter and harsher, static then erratic, the body and of the world with which we karate chops and Butoh. Here the work emerge. 18. Lizzie Muller and Caitlin Jones, “Between Real is not simply, as Penny and others say, a and Ideal: Documenting Media Art,” Leonardo Vol. 41 No. 4, 418–419 (2008). “point at which [a] computational system and the user make contact” [36]. The Conclusions 19. Massumi [5], pp. 89–90. “work” is the relationship that emerges The implicit body framework gives po- 20. Collaborators include Jeffrey Smith, Phoebe Sen- and that we emerge from. With Traces, tential modes of explicating embodied gers, Andre Bernhardt and Jamieson Shulte. bodies and images are enacted through action and thinking through interactive 21. Mark B.N. Hansen, Bodies in Code: Interfaces with their performed interactions with one art as relational and performed. It pro- Digital Media (New York: Routledge, 2006) and N. another, guiding and birthing, tracing Katherine Hayles, “Flesh and Metal: Reconfiguring poses thorough descriptions of physi- the Mindbody in Virtual Environments, ” Configura- and transforming, feeding back between cal activity and careful readings of that tions Vol. 10, 297–320 (2002). what we do, what we see and what each which is sensibly conceived. All this takes 22. Simon Penny et al., “Traces: Embodied Immer- means in and through and to and with is time: time spent interacting with art, sive Interaction with Semi-Autonomous Avatars,” the other. time spent describing those interactions Convergence: The International Journal of Research Here we see and read what we perform into New Media Technologies Vol 7 No. 2, 47–65 in detail and time contemplating, writ- (2001), p. 47. and make, together. Bodies interacting ing and iterating through our multiple in trace-space contribute to the construc- unfolding, infolding and co-emergent 23. Jean-Luc Nancy. Corpus, Translated by Richard A. tion and constitution of the image-world Rand (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2008), relations. pp. 53–56. in the VR environment with which they are interacting. Since Traces does not re- 24. Hansen [21] and Hayles [21]. References and Notes present the body but rather the body’s ac- 25. As with Utterback, Penny’s work would equally tivity, the images that participants make, Unedited references as provided by the author. benefit from being read through a multiple number of thematics. read and respond to are precisely proces- 1. David Rokeby, Stern, The Implicit Body as Performance 237 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00168 by guest on 03 October 2021 ce i v 27. The above quotations are all from Hansen [21] 30. Hayles [21] pp. 304–305. 37. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Birth to Presence, translated by r pp. 48–49. Brian Holmes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, Se 31. Hayles [21] p. 308. 1994). ts 28. Hansen [21] p. 47. c 32. Hayles [21] p. 309. 29. She draws parallels between these and Don 33. Hayles [21] pp. 308–309. stra Ihde’s work, where Human-Technology-World Manuscript received 23 July 2010. relations are also broken into three categories: 34. Penny et al. [15] p. 50. Human+Technology in relation to the World, or do Ab “embodiment relations”; Human in relation to 35. Simon Penny, “Fugitive 2,” ar Technology+World, “hermeneutic relations”; or Hu- penny/stuff/index.html>. professor of art at the University of Wisconsin- man in relation to a Technological World (such as Milwaukee. His current book project is ten- eon Second Life or the Internet), or “alterity relations.” L 36. Simon Penny, Phoebe Sengers and Jeffrey Smith, tatively titled The Implicit Body in Interac- Don Ihde, Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to “Traces: Semi-Autonomous Avatars,” announcement Artists and Scientists on the Cultural Context of Climate Change Leonardo explores the ways in which artists and scientists are addressing climate change. As contemporary culture grapples with this critical global issue, Leonardo has documented cross-disciplinary explorations by artists, scientists and engineers, working alone or in teams, addressing themes related to global warming and climate change. Partial list of Leonardo articles and projects concerned with global warming, climate change and related issues: George Gessert, “Gathered from Coinci- Andrea Polli, “Atmospherics/Weather Janine Randerson, “Between Reason dence: Reflections on Art in a Time of Works: A Spatialized Meteorological Data and Sensation: Antipodean Artists and Cli- Global Warming,” Leonardo 40, No. 3, Sonification Project,”Leonardo 38, No. 1, mate Change,” Leonardo 40, No. 5 (2007). 231–236 (2007). 31--36 (2005). Ruth Wallen, “Of Story and Place: Com- Julien Knebusch, “Art & Climate Andrea Polli, “Heat and the Heartbeat of municating Ecological Principles through Change,” Web project of the French the City: Sonifying Data Describing Climate Art,” Leonardo 36, No. 3, 179--185 (2003). Leonardo group Leonardo/Olats Change,” Leonardo Music Journal 16 (2006) (l'Observatoire Leonardo pour les Arts et pp. 44--45. Angelo Stagno and Andrea van der les Techno-Sciences), 238 Stern, The Implicit Body as Performance Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00168 by guest on 03 October 2021