"The Dis-Embodied Re-Embodied Body": Reading Response

The two opposing ideas about the body that emerge from Shaw’s discussion of the interface are that we struggle to distinguish ourselves from our mortal, ‘obsolete’ body and our performative, ‘interactive’ body. We seem to have this need to reject our ‘real’ body and engage with our ‘virtual’ self more frequently. Shaw brings up the internal struggle between the real body and real space around that body vs. the virtual body and the virtual space surrounding that body. We readily allow our virtual self to take over, when we really need to balance between the two. It seems that we have evolved into what Jean Baudrillard would call a hyperreal society, where everything seems more ‘real’ than ‘real’ itself, and at times we cannot tell our mortal self from our virtual self. It also seems that art is being lost within this same hyperreality, in which it merges with the interface and the original ‘real’ art disappearing altogether, leaving the ‘virtual’ art to remain in the forefront.

Shaw ideas can be related to Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in which traditional techniques uphold a certain importance and value to an art piece. These traditional techniques are relatable to Benjamin’s ‘aura’, in which they carry a cultural and societal meaning with them, as opposed to newer interactive techniques, which do not. The interface can reinforce the message of a work by often resembling a theme present in the work. The interface should complement the art piece, and not be to elaborate. Cumbersome interfaces can cause a negative impact regarding the message of the piece, distracting the user away from the original art’s intended meaning, and possibly changing that meaning.