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Discontiguous. Dispersed. Dissipated. Distributed. There's a lot of hype
these days about what happens to the digital body ... the digitally
disembodied. For many, the move away from an ontology rooted in a
relatively definable, observable, organically grounded and
controllable "where," toward a relatively undefinable, unobservable,
and uncontrollable "nowhere" is rather uncomfortable. Digital
immersion involves a certain dislocation of one's sense of place,
where, one might think, the physical body is dis- or re-placed with
that of the virtual world and the immaterial "no-body." The problem
comes when this process is (mis)perceived as a move away from our
pristine bodies in a "state of nature," toward our manufactured
bodies in an "unnatural state." Bodies have never been anything but
manufactured. Victoria Vesna's installation brings this point home
quite forcefully.
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