In this chapter of Sounding New Media, Dyson discusses themes of embodiment and immersion through the work of Char Davies.
First statement being made is that interactivity is not necessarily a requirement for immersion. He uses Osmosis and Ephemeral as examples of static, still experiences, that explore a state of being and becoming.
bio-feedback VR – use of breath and balance as a navigational device?
semi-transparency of objects-critiques the tendency for photorealism?, worlds devoid of solid objects
Char Davies’ myopia is mentioned as a factor in her interest in semi-transparency. This ‘soft-vision’ allows for a new way of being in the space, where it is no longer empty, filled with sharp objects, but an ‘oceanic’ space imbued with confusion.
‘the work evokes an alternate metaphysics in which materiality no longer governs ontology, and “perception,” or rather proprioception, is governed less by sight than through the boundary disturbing operations of breath and balance.’
‘new media art is a unique vehicle for both the virtualization of the body and the recovery, or manifestation, of an originary technicity. Osmose and Ephémère are, he argues, exemplary instances of what he calls “one kind of ‘body-in-code’: an experience of embodiment that is specifically engineered to breathe life into the immaterial.” – Hansen, Bodies in Code
Another part that piqued my attention:
Theorist Margaret Morse suggests that the desire for “incorporation, identification, and symbolization” that immersion in the datasphere represents (which, she argues, follows an oral logic) must be seen in the context of the body-horror genre of science fiction film: “fragmented, dismembered, or, for that matter, mismatched, multiple or decaying bodies and lost parts (namely the cannibalistic fantasy of the body treated as food) suggests that something fundamental is ‘eating’ our culture. . . . How can the body be resurrected when it is so loathed?”