The Implicit Body As Performance: Analyzing Interactive

ce I leonardo abstracts service ( l a b s ) v R e S ts The Implicit Body as Performance: c stra b Analyzing Interactive Art A do ar Nathaniel Stern leon a b s t r a c t 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 unfolding, 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 understandings 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: <[email protected]>. URL: <http://nathanielstern.com>. as a theater director. He says that performance “is a very inclu- This article is based on Nathaniel Stern’s Ph.D. thesis, “The Implicit Body: Understanding sive notion of action,” theater being “only one node on a con- Interactive Art through Embodiment and Embodiment through Interactive Art,” Trinity College Dublin, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, April 2009. The tinuum” that includes, for example, performances in everyday abstract for the thesis received the highest ranking by the Leonardo Abstracts Service life, rites and ceremonies [12]. Performance, scholars have (LABS). Those wishing to submit abstracts to LABS can find thesis abstract submission forms at <leonardolabs.pomona.edu> (for English-language abstracts) and <www.uoc.edu/ argued, is activity and process, transportative and transforma- artnodes/leonardolabs> (for Spainsh). tive, in between modalities. It is a “liminal space,” that is not ©2011 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 233–238, 2011 233 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00168 by guest on 03 October 2021 ce I 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.

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