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A more developed version of this paper can be found in
Santaella, Lucia (2003). Culturas e artes do pós-humano. Da cultura das mídias à cibercultura. São Paulo: Paulus.
THE ARTS OF THE BIOCYBERNETIC BODY
Lucia Santaella
São Paulo Catholic University
Impressive advances in the physical and biological sciences and also in information technologies in the last decades have taken many philosophers and social scientists to the consensus that human beings are crossing a border whose consequences and implications will probably be as intense as those of the neolithic revolution. Under the impact of developments such as artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnologies, virtual reality, and especially biotechnology, the real nature of humankind is being questioned to the point of receiving the new designation of post-human, post-organic, post-biological (Pepperell 1995; Haraway 1985 [1991], Ascott 1995). These atributes are used to signal the physical, psychical, mental, sensory, perceptive and cognitive changes that human beings are undergoing. In the debate concerning this important issue, there has been a current insistence on the centrality of the changes in the human body (Gigliotti 1999).
In fact, the growing expansion of the human body by means of various systems of technological extension seems to be just the beginning of a transformation of our body into a hybrid biocybernetic body. The reconstitution of the human body in its technological fusion and biomechanical extensions is creating the new hybrid nature of a cyber, prosthetic organism (Hayles 1999a), which is creating a new form of relationship or electromagnetic continuity between human beings and space through machines (Palumbo 2000: 31). This is the result of our body´s increasing ramification in varied technological systems to the limit of its simulation in artificial life and in its replication by means of clonage. That is why I prefer the term biocybernetic to prosthetic body since the issue involves the problem of biological evolution which includes but goes beyond the mere idea of external and visible modification of the body, an idea that the adjective “prosthetic” may suggest. By the way, concerning the biocybernetic body I believe that what is still not visible is much more important than what can already be seen.
“Our horizon is characterized by a paradigmatic reversal of perspective, making it essential to overcome the logic of opposition between the organic universe of the body and the mechanical universe of technology, in a new logic of complexity in which the life of the body and forms meet through the machine” (Palumbo ibid.: 5). In sum: at the beginning of the twenty-first century the human nature and the human body have become problematic and the questioning about a new anthropomorphism has been an important issue of the contemporary cultural debate. One of the most challenging tasks of our time is to find out which is the present image and form of the human body. This image is still largely conceiled from our eyes, but my hypothesis is that it is being revealed through the sensitiveness of the artists. As far as I can see, a fundamental task that the artists working with new technologies are taking ahead is to create a new sensorial imagination for human consciousness and body in this new era.
Many possibilities of disembodiment, reembodiment, and non-carnal expansions of the mind have been explored by technological artists. In a previous article on the advent of post-humanism, I came to the conclusion that the current mutations in the human body have led to the emergence of at least seven types of biocybernetic bodies: the remodelled body, the prosthetic body, the scrutinized body, the wired body, the simulated body, the digital body, and the molecular body. These are exactly the types of bodies that the artists have been taking as experimental laboratories for their creative labor.
In what follows I will describe the characteristics of these seven types of bodies to select the case of virtual reality as the most radical experience between embodiment and disembodment whose ambivalence has raised many controversies. In this context, I propose that Peirce´s concepts of immediate and dynamic object can help us to understand, beyond the usual simplified dualisms, the opposition and complementarities between the real and the virtual, the natural and the artificial, the material and its specters.
1. Seven types of biocybernetic bodies
1.1. The remodelled body
This concerns the esthetic manipulation of the body. It is a body that is built through techniques for physical refinement, such as gymnastics, musculation, body building to the limit of modelling through implantation and plastic surgery aimed at the adaptation of the body to occasional aesthetic patterns. Orlan´s well known work Omnpresence is a good example of this kind of body. The artist had a series of plastic surgeries turned into performances, the seventh of which was transmitted live via satellite to some art galleries in different parts of the world.
1.2. The prosthetic body
This is the hybrid body corrected or expanded by prostheses, that is, artificial constructions to substitute or amplify organic functions. These are fundamental alterations of the body aimed at increasing its internal functions. There is a wide range of possibilities for that. These spread from lenses for the eyes and hearing aids to functional prostheses to substitute parts of the body, such as teeth prosthesis, artificial bones, to the limit of the substitution of organic functions as in pace makers, artificial organs, and biochips implants.
The prototypical artistic example of this type of body may be found in the worldly famous works of Stelarc. A radical version of the prosthetic body is the experience of Eduardo Kac´s Time Capsule (1997a). The artist had a microchip implanted in his knee, in a carnal demonstration that the more technology comes near our body, the more it tends to permeate it (Kac 1998; Machado 2001).
1.3. The scrutinized body
In this case we have the body under the scrutiny of the machines for medical diagnosis. The most intimate recesses of the body are perscruted by non-invasive technologies. Under these machines the body is turned inside out and transformed into image. Examples of this art can be found in Corps Étranger (1994), by Mona Hatoum, who used endoscopic and coloscopic cameras to explore the outside and penetrate the inside of her body. It can also be found in Diana Domingues´series of works under the name of TRANS-E: Body and Technologies where the artist looks for situations in which the body breathes, pulsates and lives in environments where its multisensoriality is connected to machines (Domingues 2002: 177).
1.4. The wired body
Here we encounter the cyborgs interfaced in cyberspace. These are the internauts who move inside cyberspace while their bodies are hoocked in the computer for the input and output of information data. When the bodies are wired they always present some level of immersion which means that the perceptive system of the user is submerged to a certain extent. The more a system is able to captivate the user´s senses and block the stimuli from the physical world out there, the more this system is considered to be immersive. The most splendid metaphor of the immersive body can be found in Matrix, the film.
In this type of body -- the wired, pluged in or hoocked body -- the levels of intefaces are varied, from the most superficial to the most immersive. Here the body splits into some sub-types as follows:
1.4.1. The body immersion is kept at the level of internet links. Hence, this may be called linking immersion. The number of works of art exploring this kind of body connection is uncountable and they are labelled as net art. A very good example can be found in Lucia Leão´s collaborative work, Plural Maps, where the artists uses informational spaces taken from the Web to construct a cartography of São Paulo. This cartography was created by internauts who sent their choices to the artist (http://lucialeao.pro.br/pluralmaps/index.htm). Another example is Luiza Donati´s Incorpos, where the artist uses Web in directo images of bodies. These images are collected in a site that proposes ever new combinations of the physical bodies (http://wawrwt.iar.unicamp.br/Incorpos.htm).
1.4.2. The body´s immersion proceeds into the level of the avatars, what I call immersion through avatars. These are graphic figures, inhabitants of virtual worlds. Cybernauts can select and incorporate avatar bodies, to move around virtual bi or tri-dimensional environments, meet other avatars, communicate with them. An example of this bodily interchange can be found in Suzete Venturelli´s work, especially in Kinnetic World (www.arte.unb.br/kw). Another work is Desertesejo, by Gilbertto Prado, a multiuser virtual interactive environment which permits the simultaneous presence of 50 participants (http://www.itaucultural.org.br/desertesejo).
1.4.3. There is another kind of immersion that I call hybrid immersion. It is being intensily explored in performances, especially in dance performances when the dancer´s movement meet interface designs, interactive systems, 3D visualisation or immersive data environments, virtual worlds, and other generative system designs. All this can be found, for instance, in the Interactive Performance Series of the Dance and Technology program at Ohio State University (www.dance.ohio-state.edu). In Brazil, the artist Tania Fraga´s present work is turned to the creation of cyberbeings and cyberscenarios to interact with carnal dancers.
Outside the realm of performance art, another example of hybrid immersion appears in the work, Field Recording Studies, by Michael Naimark. This work, which emphasizes the relationship of the cyberlandscapes and the geographical landscapes, was developed in the context of the Art and Virtual Environments Project, conducted at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Canada, from 1992-1994 (Morse 1996: 203).
1.4.4. The next step of body immersion is that of telepresence. This means the feeling of being present in a distant physical location. In telepresence applications, virtual reality technologies are connected to a robotic system that is physically present in some distant place. The participant´s body sees, touches and moves around the distant place due to the links with the robot – cameras, microphones, touch sensors etc., and effectors, the robot´s arms. Eduardo Kac (see Kac 1997b) was one of the precursors in this kind of art work, when he presented his “Ornitorrinco in Eden”, at the Festival of Interactive Art, in 1994 (www.ekac.org/ornitorrincoM.html).
In Brasil, the artist Bia Medeiros directs a group of research on “Informatic Bodies”. This group has been working on Performance Art in Telepresence through the use of internet (http://corpos.org/telepresence). Also in Brazil, recently Diana Domingues has created her impressive work Ins(h)nak(r)es. Using robotics, sensoring and telematic communication networks, the work proposes the participant to share the body of a robot/snake that lives in a serpentarium (http://artecno.ucs.br/insnakes).
1.4.5. The last step in immersion is the one of effective virtual environments when there is a delicate coordination of sophisticated instruments for the input and output of information. Each output instrument, which connects the sensorial order to the external world, is planed toward the aim of illuding the participant´s eyes, the ears, the hands, and his/her whole body. The input instruments monitor the participant´s body movements and his/her responses. Sophisticated softwares command the illusion while one or more powerful graphic stations orquestrate the input and output instruments (Biocca 1997: 205-6). There is a great variation of possible instruments and softwares for virtual environments from the most rudimentary to the most sophisticated. The most common is the HMD, acronym for Head Mounted Displays, and datagloves. The most sophisticated is the Cave, an acronym for Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, which places the human body directly inside a computer generated environment. Instead of wearing helmets which limit their mobility, the users are surrounded by a full circle, immersive, digital environment (Packer and Jordan 2001: xxix).
Some examples of virtual environment arts can be seen in the results of the Banff Art and Virtual Environments Project (see Moser et al. 1996, especially the Artist´s Statements). Among these projects, Dancing with the Virtual Dervish: Worlds in Progress, by Marcos Novac (1996: 3003-4), is one of “the first virtual environment projects to synthesize immersive and interactive digitized new dance in a distributed performance environment that includes a head-display, dataglove, three dimensional sound, and interactive video projections (Sharir 1996: 283).
In Brazil, Daniela Kutschat and Rejane Cantoni have been working on their OP_Era project. This aims at creating a real time generated space which integrates body-sound-image. It is a virtual environment composed of a cubic space of projection, four projection screens, which are integrated by a controlling computer and an interface for position and orientation detection. The computer is programmed to control the agency of the multiple interactors, in real time, and a 3D interface will be developed specifically for the aplication.
1.5. The simulated body
The fifth type of biocybernetic body is the simulated one. By that I mean the body made of algorithms, made of stripes of numbers, a completely disincarnated body. Given the extreme mathematical and physical sophistication of this disincarnation, it´s existence is still being studied in what Lainier calls teleimersion, when the carnal body is plugged in while a virtual version of this same body is transported to another place (Lainier cf. Ex. Biocca: 1997: 220). A progenitor of teleimersion is “Reality-made-for-two”, when two distant people interact in real time through graphic representations of each other. A simpler variation of the simulated body, which does not imply teletransportation, can be found in the numerical beings whose appearance imitates the appearance of a carnal person.
Also simulated but a simulation of a different sort are the samples of artificial life bodies, since anything can be simulated from the hormon system to the rumors of the body.
1.6. The digitalized body
This type of body is connected to the Visible Human Project, belonging to the National Library of Medicine, USA. This project refers to the experience of an integral digitalization of two cadavers of a man and a woman, which were donated after death for their transfiguration in digital data. The man´s cadaver was sectioned at one milimeter interval and the woman´s at one third of a milimiter interval. This resulted in a perfect digital tridimensional representation of the bodies for purposes of research.
1.7. The molecular body
This seventh and last type of body has been at the center of our attention since the deciphering of the basic summary of the human genome whose first results were publicized recently. Through bioengeneering and genetic engeneering techniques, the manipulations of the genetic material can range from transgenic experiences to human clonage. A brand new trend in art, called bioart, incorporates the field of biotechnology, neurosciences, genetics, molecular engeneering into art. Eduardo Kac´s work on transgenic art is one of the pioneers in this kind of art (http://www.ekac.org/transgenicindex.html). Among his projects are Genesis which was followed by GFP Bunny. This consisted in the genetic modification of a rabbit through the aplication of a luminescent gene. Under a blue light the animal becomes green.
The most recent of Kac´s eco and bioart project is called the eighth day, a transgenic artwork that investigates the new ecology of fluorescent creatures that is evolving worldwide. The work brings together living transgenic life forms and a biological robot (biobot) in a special environment that is meant to dramatize the fact that a transgenic ecology is already in place in the world.
A very complex project on bioart is also being developed in Brazil by Wagner Garcia under the name of Cloathing Earth with Mind.
The semiotic complexities of all these types of body are striking, especially when we think about their semiotic potential. It is not by chance that the theoreticians of cyberspace, when faced with the ambiguities of the so called “real” and virtual, call this opposition the representational dilemma of cyberspace. The most intriguing dilemma certainly concerns the body boundaries in the process of embodiment and disembodiment that takes place in experiences of virtual reality. That is why I have chosen to take under semiotic consideration exactly this kind of body experience.
2. The ambiguity of the body in virtual environments
What happens to the participant´s body when he/she enters a virtual reality simulation? Let´s hear what the commentators say. According to Hayles (1996: 14), first of all, body boundaries become ambiguous.
“Body motions affect what happens in the simulation, so that one both is and is not present in the body and in the simulation. The body marks one kind of presence; the point of view, or POV, that constructs the user´s position within the simulation, marks another. As a marker of subjectivity [...] POV functions as a pronoum, a semiotic container for subjectivity”.
Morse (1996: 198-199) goes even further in her analysis of the multiple aspects of “personhood” and “agency” in the landscape of cyberspace. “Once ‘inside’ cyberspace”, she asks,
“what happens to subjectivity travelling in the “nonspace” of a virtual environment? [...] While the visitor to the virtual environment moves in a very circunscribed physical area, his or her motion is tracked and the appropriate shift in his or her point of view within a vast virtual landscape is constructed instantly. Cyberspace, then, is not merely a scenic space where things could happen; it also incorporates the artificial intelligence or agency that orchestrates the virtual scene (delegated human subjectivity). [...] Surrogates of the user within the virtual realm can be expressed in many different persons and degrees of immersion: an ‘I’ or the subjective and ‘embodied’ view of the world from inside it; a ‘me’ as a corporeally separate persona or avatar, whose appearance and characteristics (often chosen from stock) represent the self in a screen-based world; a self that lurks as a ghostly, disembodied perception, marked or unmarked in that world; or a character, ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’, with a more distanced relation to the visitor´s self – and there is the uncanny agency of the space itself”.
The plurality of the body´s role in virtual environments is really overwhelming, most especially in the art of virtual environments since most artists “prefer to foreground the shimmering inexactitude between the material and the immaterial, and to allow for ambiguity in the apparent association of the virtual with the seemingly immortal, infinite, and sublime” (Morse ibid.: 204). Incapable of facing this ambiguity some theoreticians emphasize the role of the physical body.
For Bailey (1996: 36), for instance, “an awareness of the physical, “real” body is crucial to the disembodied projections of cyberspace. The physical body remains the referent. Cyberspace would not make sense without it”. Tenhaaf (1996: 59-60) adds that
“although the trip into data matrices through wetfare interfaces is proposed to be more real than reality, it invokes a struggle to hang onto the knowledge that this space does not engage the whole self, the psyche clings to the memory that this space is a representation, that is, it clings to a memory of the real body and its formulation in physical space. The body is experienced as an image of the body engaged in a deep penetration or a momentary dissolution into space. The experience is intensified by the sense that this projected space has a metaphysical power, it seems to be or is imputed to be a self-sustaining controlling device beyond authorship, a symbolic apparatus outside the self with the capability of ordering representation and constructing the perceiving subject. Rather than a two-way flow, it is an absorption that reconstitutes control from a powerful external source”.
Other theoreticians, on the other side, emphasize the role of the immaterial body to the detriment of the physical one. Walser and Gulichsen (apud Penny 1995: 243) are so radical in this position as to state that
“In cyberspace there is no need to move about in a body like the one you possess in physical reality. [...] There is no need for a body at all in VR. All one requires is an indication of the location of VR effectors with respect to one´s virtual view-point. As the entire physical body is represented in VR by a larger and larger array of interface points, the potential diversity of one´s image in VR will become more limited. The variety is possible now only because one can put just any shape between the image of the glove and one´s virtual viewpoint”.
Hayles (1999b: 69-94) reacts against this privilege of information over materialiy and claims that it is a historical construction to believe that computer media are disembodied technologies. We cannot afford to ignore the materiality of the interfaces they create or the effects of these interfaces on the users.
This controversial debate testify to the ambivalent nature of the body in cyberspace, an ambivalence that calls for a semiotic analysis. Given the complexity of the issue and the limits of this paper, in what follows I shall limit myself to the examination of what appears to me to be the most crucial topic, that is, the divided condition of the body. This will be analysed in the light of Peirce´s notion of the object of the sign.
3. The semiosis of disembodiment in virtual environments
For Peirce, the object of the sign is something that the sign represents, but, at the same time, the object determines the sign. The sign is a kind of emanation of the object, a mediation between the object and the effect to be produced in a possible mind, but, at the same time, the object is the source of semiosis, that is, the source of the action of the sign.
There are two types of objects: the immediate and the dynamical. The dynamical object is that something, generally outside the sign, which the sign represents and which determines the sign. The immediate object, in its turn: (a) suggests or alludes the dynamical object; (b) is the dynamical object as represented within the sign itself, as the sign manifests it, as the sign permits us to know it. The way the immediate object represents the dynamical object depends on the nature of the sign. If it is a symbol, then the immediate object really represents the dynamical object. If it is an index, them the immediate object is just connected to the dynamical object. If it is an icon, the immediate object can only suggest the dynamical object.
In sum: the notion of the immediate object is crucial in order to understand that (a) there is no possible direct access to the dynamical object except through the mediation of the immediate object; (b) to fulfil this mediation the immediate object has to present some kind of correspondence with the dynamical object. This correspondence may be of the nature of a law, of a physical connection or of the nature of a mere quality (Santaella 1988).
When we take into consideration the condition of the user´s body in cyberspace, we recognize immediatly that an indexical semiosis is involved and that this indexicality exists in the framework of perception and proprioperception.
At this point, Peirce´s theory of perception may be of great help for the understanding of the connection between the immediate and dynamical object in an indexical semiosis and the process of perception, since, for Peirce, the process of perception is also a process of semiosis, as follows.
Every theory of perception is dualistic, a process that involves something that is perceived and a perceiver. With a view to reconciling and integrating into a coherent and logical whole the dichotomy intrinsic to the ingredients of perception, Peirce arrives at a dialectic position, a triadic scheme (as it couldn´t be otherwise) which determines three ingredients in perception: percept, percipuum, and perceptual judgement. These are interdependent but irreducible, which allows them to be analytically isolated for examination of their respective characteristics.
When we perceive something, we are alerted to an essential duality, in which there is something which lies outside us and which is presented to our senses, and which can not be exhausted by the act of perception. To perceive is to perceive something external to ourselves. But we can say nothing of that which is external to ourselves except through the mediation of a perceptual judgement. To that which is outside us, Peirce gives the name of percept; that which tells us what we perceive is the perceptual judgement. And the percipuum? This is the percept as it is immediatly interpreted in the perceptual judgement. Hence, it is dependent on our motor, nervous and sensorial systems, dependent on the way we are sensorially equipped for that. Human beings, for instance, do not see as flies do.
Now, if we apply the network of semiosis to the ingredients of perception, we will see that the percept fulfils the logical role of the dynamic object, the percipuum performs the task of the immediate object, and the judgement of perception acts as the sign and the future interpretant (Santaella 1993). Let´s apply this network to the user´s body in a cyber environment.
In normal situations of perception, the percept, which is the dynamic object of perception, is something that is in the world out there, a stimulus that is forced upon us, that compels our attention and insists to be recognized in its existence. Well, in the semiosis of virtual environments, the logical position of the dynamic object, that is, the percept out there, is occupied by a symbolic apparatus, a controlling device with the capability of ordering representation and constructing the perceiving subject. It is an agency that monitors the corporeal movements of the subject, his or her point of view. These movements are orchestrated in relation to simulated scenes, constructing the subject´s position within the simulation. This radical change in the dynamic object of perception is what makes all the difference and brings all the complexities for the role of the participant´s body in virtual environments.
In any perceptual semiosis, the subject´s body, or better, his/her sensorial apparatus plays an important role in the percipuum. This, as we know, occupies the logical position of the immediate object and corresponds to the way the percept is immediatly interpreted in the judgement of perception. This interpretation is dependent on the agent´s sensorial apparatus. In virtual environments this sensorial apparatus is augmented thanks to symbolic devices that monitor the VR effectors in respect to the subject´s virtual point of view. This can only work if the subject´s perceptual connection to the world out there is blocked. This means that in virtual environments, the body is really divided into two different, albeit complementary, media. On the one hand, the body maintains the proprioception of its carnal existence in the space where it exists. On the other hand, the monitored array of interfaces transports the body´s augmented sensorial and perceptual apparatus toward an immersive journey into an spectral world.
This means that, for the judgement of perception, that plays the role of the sign in this semiosis, there are two distinct and simultaneous representations of the body, that of the carnal body and that of the alternative bodies of disincarnated projections. This explains how proprioceptive coherence can be maintained despite the everchanging body boundaries in cyberspace.
As we can see, although the complexities of the body´s role in virtual environments can not be underestimated, a semiotic analysis may bring some understanding of these complexities what gives reason to the proverb that there is nothing more practical than a good theory.
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