UNDER RE-CONSTRUCTION: ARCHITECTURES OF BODIESİ INCORPORATED

Victoria Vesna and Robert Nideffer
http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/bodiesinc



Welcome to Bodiesİ INCorporated. The building elements at your disposal are ASCII text, simple geometric forms, TEXTures, and low resolution sound. Bodies built become your personal property, operating in and circulating through public space, free to be downloaded into your private hard drive/communication system at any time. The MOO/WOO functions as an institution through which your body gets shaped in the process of identity construction that occurs in, and mutually implicates, both the symbolic and material realms.

BODY CONSTRUCTION ORDER FORM

[Member friendly female voice...]
"Please complete the form below and answer the questions carefully. It should only take a few minutes of your time."

STEP 1: Personal Information; STEP 2: Body Name; STEP 3: Gender; STEP 4: Sexual Preference; STEP 5: Textures (Member may choose from one of 12 options -- Lava, Chocolate, Pumice, Concrete, Water, Sky, Wood, Blue Plastic, Black Rubber, Clay, Glass, and Bronze -- r each of the following: head, torso, and right and left arm and leg); STEP 6: Resolution (Hi, Medium, or Lo); STEP 7: Age; STEP 8a: Body Part Selection -- External; STEP 8b: Body Part Selection -- Internal; STEP 9: Psychic relationship to body; STEP 10: Special Handling Instructions and/or Body Descriptions.

ORDER BODY -- Please go over the selections. If Member likes what's been chosen, "SUBMIT" below. If not, then "CLEAR" to dis-order.

[new Member SUBMITs]

Bodiesİ INCorporated: Member Authorization Agreement (redistribution encouraged)

By "ACCEPTing," new Member is consenting to be bound by the following agreement. If Member does not agree to all of the terms contained herein, then "DO NOT ACCEPT" and the installation process will abort.

[Member ACCEPTs]

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY Free of charge Body is provided on an "AS IS" basis, without warranty of any kind. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the Body is borne by said Member. Should the Body prove defective, Member, and not Bodiesİ INCorporated, assumes the entire cost, economic and/or otherwise, of any service and repair. This disclaimer of warranty constitutes an essential and unnegotiable part of the agreement.

[Member ACCEPTs]

LIMITED WARRANTY Bodiesİ INCorporated warrants that for a period of forty (40) days from the date of acquisition, if operated as directed, the Body will achieve the functionality described in the documentation. Bodiesİ INCorporated does not warrant, however, that your use of the Body will be uninterrupted, or that the operation of the Body will be virus-free or secure. In addition, the security mechanisms implemented by Bodiesİ INCorporated have inherent limitations, and it is Member's responsibility to determine that the Body sufficiently meets your requirements.

[Member ACCEPTs] CONDITIONS OF BODY OWNERSHIP Member may:

* use the Body on a single computer; * use the Body on a network, provided that each person accessing the Body through the network has a copy licensed to that Owner and ONLY that owner; * use the Body on a second computer so long as only ONE copy is used at a time; * copy the Body for archival purposes, provided copy contains all the original Owner's proprietary notices; * permit other individuals to use the Body; * permit concurrent use of the Body; * modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble (except to the extent prohibited by law), or create derivative works based on the Body; * rent, lease, grant a security interest in, or otherwise transfer rights to the Body; * remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Body.

TITLE Title, ownership rights, and intellectual property rights pertaining to the Body shall become the Member's, and are frequently protected by copyright laws and treaties.

[Member ACCEPTs] The aesthetic code is strictly enforced at Bodiesİ INCorporated, although the Board will take into consideration proposals for stylistic divergence at all times. By joining the Bodiesİ INCorporated community you have agreed to abide by a principle of radical dissent. This means that you retain the right to dissent, and to remain dissenting, in any activities in which you must choose to participate.

D&G declare: "People ask, So what is this [Body without Organs]?--But you're already on it, scurrying like a vermin, groping like a blind person, or running like a lunatic: desert traveler and nomad of the steppes. On it we sleep, live our waking lives, fight--fight and are fought--seek our place, experience untold happiness and fabulous defeats; on it we penetrate and are penetrated; on it we love."[1]

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

Moving forward through space, on a line of thought formed directly ahead of you, you register, peripherally, many other similarly moving objects. Along the path, you pay close attention to signs that act as reminders of Bodiesİ INCorporated's stringent rules and regulations. This is your space (and time), some of the few moments when you can be alone with your body. Below you is a large Motherboard, feeling a strange nostalgia, you zoom in and enter Home.

Home is a gated community plugged into the surrounding chaos via various surveillance cameras and teams of journalists, who venture out to record the status of a separate existence. This daily news is important to the Bodiesİ INCorporated community, as it reinforces the significance of the stringent rules and regulations that Members have to abide by in order to enjoy a sense of peace and security. Home, INCorporated in 1995, possesses an architecture that hovers somewhere between a circuit board and Disneyland. The Board of Directors have devised a list of rules and regulations which must be carefully followed. Realize that your total autonomy is itself anything but an exclusive fiction.

"Decency" is defined in strict codes in the virtuality of the material realm; surveillance is firmly established, and privacy demolished. However, you do have the option of ESCcape, or the ability to create your own personal space. As you read the prospectus of Home, a silvery shadow is thrown over your immediate surroundings. David Bohm speaks with a gentle tonality:

"Sometimes permanent (i.e.., energy conserving) transitions are called real transitions, to distinguish them from the so-called virtual transitions, which do not conserve energy and which must therefore reverse before they have gone too far. The terminology is unfortunate, because it implies that virtual transitions have no real effects. On the contrary, they are often of the greatest importance, for the great many physical processes are the result of these so called virtual transitions."[2]

Not sure what to make of this apparitional appearance, you turn your attention back to the legal documentation hanging over you, and zoom in on the behavioural provisions. Be aware, there are rigid codes of conduct members must follow in order to retain active membership within the Body Owner community. The hierarchy is strictly undefined. The conceptual programmers (also funcitoning as systems administrators) are the ArchiTexts writ large, who at any moment may penetrate Members' personal space to inspect their actions. they are equivalent to the idea of God/dess. The administrators of the representational realm, are the unquestionable ArchiTexts writ small. They are in charge of checking spaces, tracking usage, and bestowing permissions. The Builders are privileged members who have earned the permission to access the source code required for erecting your world.

RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR HOME

1) Member's living space must follow the color swatches obtained from the local community administration office. Any colors outside the suggested scheme are absolutely forbidden and may result in fines or even expulsion from Bodiesİ INCorporated.
2) Gardenias and other selected flowers should be kept under complete control, and allowed to grow no higher than two feet. Use of silicon preserved plants is encouraged. Bodiesİ INCorporated will be glad to provide Member with the preservation formula.
3) Member's garage cannot be kept open for more than a half an hour; also, Member must remain cognizant of the organizational structure of the garage's contents.ust avoid too many transportation metaphors. If Member builds a super-information highway, a randomly occurring earthquake will most likely destroy it.
6) Member's private construction zone will be purged, and Member's body sent to Limboİ INCorporated if Member does not log on and frequently join the critical discourse and energize the body/space.
7) Once constructed, Member's body cannot ever be deleted; traces remains even after being disposed of at Necropolisİ INCorporated. Under extraordinary duress Members may petition to have their traces completely erased.
8) If Members transgress and break the code, Member or Member's system may possibly crash or be attacked by a serious virus. Viral attacks are carefully devised to completely paralyze all Member's activities while invading Member's mind with paranoid thoughts (please note-liability clause).

Our aim at Bodiesİ INCorporated is to publicly provide a private space where the disparate experiences of individual social identities are similarly portrayed. Culture gets processed and oriented through Member's body, acting as cuisinart. In addition, Bodiesİ INCorporated proudly boasts the largest archive of dead philosophers -- sliced, diced, and intertextually blended -- whose randomly occurring thoughts fill the space, serving to keep the level of discourse constantly circulating on a higher plane. Living cultural critics, artists, and others are periodically invited in for live chats with the Body Owner community. Submissions are, of course, welcome.

Framed off to the South, you see several large iconographic representations of other INCorporated spaces. You pick the one that reminds you of Home, a rather safe, generic, suburban space; a sprawling housing development resembling a microchip at a distance.

LIMBOİ INCorporated

Perpetual Existence, a continuation of the entity after the death of said body owner. "Transfer of Ownership Interest" -- the freedom of each owner to transfer his or her interest in the space without restrictions -- is impossible. The following provides a score for each type of entity, based on the preferences listed. This summary may provide some guidance in the selection of an entity form. However, it is inappropriate to select an entity by simply selecting the entity form with the highest number of responses. Each form of entity has advantages and disadvantages that may be more or less important, depending upon the owner's preferences, and the circumstances that apply to that specific situation.

A) Enter an X to include an optional section that identifies the owner's preferences regarding important factors that determine the appropriate form of entity.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
B) Enter an X to include a statement of the owner's expectations regarding the entities expected level of activity.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for an explanation of how this expectation affects the choice of entity.
C) Enter an X to include a statement by the owner regarding distributions from the entity to the owner.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for an explanation of how this factor affects the choice of entity.
D) Enter an X to include a statement regarding the importance of liability protection for the owner(s).
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for an explanation of how this preference affects the choice of entity.
E) Enter an X to include a statement regarding the number of owner(s).
F) Enter an X if it is expected that there will be only one owner.
G) Enter an X if it is expected that there will be at least two bodies, but not more than 35.
H) Enter an X to state the importance of other factors to the owner(s).
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for an explanation of how these factors affect the choice of body entity.
I) Enter an X if it is important that the form of body survive the death(s) of the owner(s).
J) Enter an X if it is important to the owners to be able to freely transfer their respective interests in the space to other parties without restrictions.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.

Bodiesİ INCorporated calculates the number of responses that are favorable to the establishment of a SOLE PROPRIETORSHIP, a GENERAL PARTNERSHIP, and a LIMITED PARTNERSHIP. Bodiesİ INCorporated calculates the number of responses that are favorable to the establishment of an "X" or unknown INCorporation. Finally, Bodiesİ INCorporated calculates the number of responses that are favorable to the establishment of a LIMITED LIABILITY BODY.

[Member SUBMITs]

You find yourself in a passage with a flourescent light, flickering above a broken "Enter" sign making a buzzing noise, inviting you in. You are somewhere, neither here nor there, while everything that seems to matter remains at a distance. A Vortex Vector unexpectedly sucks you into a deep indigo blue space with no sound, text, or conceptual reference points. Just as you start feeling the infinite transitional possibilities dis-place offers, you emerge into Limboİ INCorporated.

"Hypertextualized bodies in limbo -- a region where immaterialized thought-forms are detained until final judgment -- abstracted from the temporal flow, discontiguous, disarticulated, inert and constrained. Gestational body-as-prosthesis, enabling psychological acclimation to an aethereal self-as-other."[3]

A legal form hovers above, giving you the option of ESCaping. If you don't successfully exit out of Limboİ INCorporated in 40 days, you will remain ensnared forever, with only your e-mail left as a trace. A sprawling row of gray cubicles extends before you. The fluorescent light is damaged, blinking and making an unsettling sound of permanence and static, as a bubble-jet printer spews out continuous streams of the defunct body orders of those stuck in Limboİ INCorporated. You are returned to screen based communication, textually prompted, and have lost the power of immersion and interaction. All you can access is an enormous list of body orders with an endless row of e-mail addresses that have become inert and disabled. You become mesmerized at how incredibly boring and non-descript the space you are in is, though you stay for ages, scrolling through the immeasurable forms. After almost nodding out, you decide to try and leave.

You realize the obligation/commitment you have made by submitting to the intial contracts and shudder at the thought of being trapped here forever. Behind an opaque glass ceiling, you notice a female form. You zoom in, focus, and find Ada, musing on the meaning of "Zero." She is transparent, frozen in time, while under chloroform sedation, and the glass surrounding her delicately inscribed:

"Zero is something, though not some quantity, which is what you here mean by thing. Some writers in the differential calculus use not 0, but 0/0, in an absolute sense, as standing for a quantity...Absolute modes of speaking, which are false, are continually used in abbreviation of circumlocutions."[4]

The exit sign is nowhere to be found, your keyboard is sticky and stiff, preventing you from being able to type the exit command. Just as you start to give up and begin contemplating the meaning of inertia, a fire escape finally appears. You find yourself in a short corridor. To the North is the Conference Center, to the East, the Library, and to the West, some offices for rent. You see the New Projects board here and decide to apply for a permit to construct a private architecture. Of course, this initiates another long and formalized list of rules and regulations at the site of the ArchiTextural Authority.

[Member enters]

BUILDING CODE CENTRAL

It should be noted that the strategy of screening heterogeneous TEXTures with homogeneous fronts is to view the body from the inside. The mission of the exterior envelope is to make a barrier against the outside. Although spaces may be constructed out of heterogeneous building codes, the resulting protective structures must behave as though they are homogenous and continuous.

[Member ACCEPTs] Reading the enormous list of provisions, you highlight the six elements which will be of main concern: Noise, Fire, and Water, Lights, Camera, and Action.

NOISE
The building code enforces protection from noise at the boundary of each separate body. Noise is ubiquitous. Ideally, noise protection can be understood as a seamless layer, bounding and protecting Member's dwelling container. Densification of concrete TEXTures are essential in order to dampen sounds, and prevent them from entering the Member's private space.

FIRE AND WATER
The building code distinguishes between ground water and water from the sky. A Fire-Wall has been assigned a number of nano-seconds (ranging from 1 to 70) designating the length of time it may be expected to survive in the event of code breaching. The struggle (of fire protection within the confines of the code) is between the individuality of these disparate components and the homogeneity of surface.

LIGHTS
Provisions of light infringe upon the privacy created by opaque barriers; each addition causes an erasure of solidity. Just as clothing only partially covers the body, the light's spatial dimension only partially drapes its occupants. The provision for light treats each body as a complete entity, helping to define the boundary between the outside and the inside of the space itself, a small-scale version of the previous conception of the whole-as-medium.

CAMERA
Laws of camera movements are governed by rigid rules, though Members have multiple lenses available for their viewing pleasure. Be aware, fish-eye lenses require two-weeks notice. Pinhole lens codes are only obtainable by special request to the archiTexts, and require outstanding proposals for granting consideration. NOTE: Frames of reference generated by Member's POV are completely contextual and non-negotiable.

ACTION
The Body is fault-intolerant, and is not designed or intended for use as online control equipment in hazardous environments that require fail-safe performance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, traffic control, life support machines, or weapons systems in which the failure of the Body might lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical, mental and/or environmental damage. Bodiesİ INCorporated specifically disclaims any express or implied warranty of fitness for such "High Risk Activities."

[Member ACCEPTs] "Sorry, your current USERID and/or Password was not found in the Member Directory. Member can register for a Guest Password, activated for 24 hours, here. Please enter your e-mail address and logon as Guest." [Member selects E-MAIL]

"Sorry, your current USERID and/or Password was not found in the Member Directory. Member can register for a Guest Password, activated for 24 hours, here. Please enter your e-mail address and logon as Guest."

[Member selects E-MAIL]

"Authorization failed. Retry?"

[Member CLEARs]

"Server Error. This server has encountered an internal error which prevents it from fulfilling your request. The most likely cause is a misconfiguration. Please ask the ArchiTexts to look for messages in the server's error log."

[Member SUBMITs]

Well, That Didn't Work!

Are you sure you're a Bodiesİ INCorporated member?
Try retyping your member name and password.
The unauthenticated version of that page may be found here.
If you're not a member yet, you can join Bodiesİ INCorporated.

Did you forget your password?
Don't stress. We'll give you a new one.
If you've forgotten your member name, we can remind you
through email.

Is your browser compatible with our site?
Bodiesİ INCorporated supports most browsers, but it never hurts to
use our proprietary browser.

Still feeling lost?
We're here to help!
You can also drop us a line.

Note: Your registered e-mail address is the address you entered when you signed up for your Bodiesİ INCorporated Membership. Your password change information will be mailed to this address. If you have moved, please write to address@Bodiesİ INCorporated.org. Include your first and last name, Member-name, and both your old and new addresses in your correspondence.

[Member SUBMITs]

.esrever ni rotceV xetroV

NECROPOLISİ INCorporated

A wind whispers in from the East, blowing across the terrain of Necropolisİ INCorporated. A scent of fire and incense wrapped in a darkly shrouded mist rolls in softly with the ash, enveloping your being. You are gently summoned to enter the dark and foreboding, yet oddly inviting Necropolisİ INCorporated. You come to the sudden realization that your desire for rational and calculated control has more to do with a drive toward death than with a love of life.

1. Distributions to Body parts...
2. Death of a Body...
3. Personal Property Distribution...
4. Residuary Assets...
5. Right to Direct Death...
6. Revoke or Amend Governing Law of Perpetual Life Clause...
7. Severability...
8. Miscellaneous Provisions...
9. Terminal Identity...
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.

A) This required section explains distributions that will be made to the Bodies during their joint lives with the Owners, and includes provisions regarding the possibility of a Body becoming "disabled."
B) This required section provides for the continuation of the Trust upon the death of one of the Bodies.
C) This optional section permits the distribution of specific property to named beneficiaries. -- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
D) This required section provides for the distribution of the intellectual assets upon the death of the surviving Body.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
E) This required section includes standard powers for the Owner.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
F) This optional section includes optional Owner powers.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
G) This section describes how the Owner can revoke or amend the Body. After a Body dies, the surviving Owner can continue to receive distributions or revoke the Body.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
H) This required section provides that the entire document will not be invalid simply because one of its provisions was (or became) invalid under state or federal law. Bodiesİ INCorporated will provide the appropriate acknowledgement form for the state that is entered here. Bodiesİ INCorporated selects "Sole Trustee" by transferring your choice from the first section. If you wish to name Co-Trustees, you must return to that section. Enter an X if the Sole Trustee is a corporation, rather than an individual.

This Agreement amends and restates any prior Agreement. In consideration of the mutual covenants and promises set forth in this Agreement, the Owner and the Body consent to do as follows:

PURPOSE
The purpose of this Agreement is to establish a Trust to receive and manage the Body during the Owner's life, and to further manage and distribute the assets of the Trust upon the death of the surviving Owner.

FUNDING OF TRUST
Any community property transferred to this Trust shall remain community property until the death of either Grantor. This Trust may also receive property from any person or entity who is acting under the authority granted to that Body or entity by the Owner. It is also expected that this Trust may receive assets pursuant to the terms of either of the Owner's Last Will and Testament. [see Owner's Death Section (1 of 40)]

DEATH OF A BODY
Upon the death of the first of the Bodies (the "Descendent"), this trust shall continue for the benefit of the surviving Owner, subject to distributions (if any) that may be required (i) by this Agreement, or (ii) to pay the just debts, funeral expenses, and expenses of last illness of the freshly Deceased.

FORTY DAY SURVIVAL REQUIREMENT
For the purposes of determining the appropriate distributions, no person or organization shall be deemed to have survived the Body, unless such person or entity is also surviving on the fortieth day after the date of that Grantor's death.

[Member friendly female voice...]
"To insure that you will only LOOK at bodies, tremendous failsafes have been established to maintain security. Please fill out the Identity Verification Form."

[Member fills out form]

[Member friendly female voice...]
"Thank you for your compliance."

You gain entry, and find yourself floating in space, looking down on a vast VRML webscape of what appear to be endless rows of cubes with e-mail addresses. Silicon preserved plastic flowers fill the space, as do streams of primitive wire-frame models. The environment is pleasantly lit, and very inviting; you notice a musty insence, agreeable mixtures of indian ragas, tibetan chants and renaissance harpsichords with reverbed reggae rub-a-dub.

[Member friendly female voice...]
"Here to LOOK or to DIE?"

[Member LOOKs]

You notice Bataille sitting at a Terminal and zoom into his screen:

"The victim dies and the spectators share in what [the] death reveals. This is what religious historians call the sacramental element ... the revelation of continuity through the death of a discontinuous being to those who watch it as a solemn rite. A violent death disrupts the creature's discontinuity: what remains, what the tense onlookers experience in the succeeding silence, is the continuity of all existence with which the victim is now one."[5]

You continue to move in, and find yourself in a vast, open terrain. A strong transcendental wind blows you around. To the West, you see a huge logo of Bodiesİ INCorporated hovering above an enormous building resembling a museum. To the south lies the vast sprawling housing development of Limboİ INCorporated. Between the two, at a diagonal, you can make out 1001 plateaus. What looked like cubes are identical dark gray tombstones with shiny luminescent holographs of e-mail addresses. You check to see if you can find out whether the body buried at the tombstone belonged to an organization, an educational institution, the military complex, or a simple commercial domain.

You decide to communicate with the dead by cliking on the e-mail in order to send a message to the embedded address. Unexpectedly, an O-Bit of the Body encased within flies out for you to read. Unfortunately the address itself is no longer accessible, since the body owner elected to deactivate it. You zoom into what seems an interesting name on another tombstone nearby, "Worm," to try to request a talk session, and receive the following message almost instantaneously:

"Death as spectacle, spectacular death -- now graphically materialized, soon to be de-materialized, thought-forms -- where psychological attachment is activated by the prospect of (psychic and terminally) projected loss. The dis-embodied becomes emotionally charged, ready to be horrifically realized, consequentially committed, and ex(or)cised".[6]

On a slowly spinning color-saturated videocube are images of baroque floral arrangements, with ribbons and gold letters. You click one of the sides of the cube and a death advertisement is launched:

You get an increasingly uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach. Suddenly you are notified that your time to LOOK has expired. The whole screen gets progressively filled with O-Bits, and out of that confusion emerges...

SHOWPLACE!!!İ INCorporated

1. Confidential Information...
2. Protection of Information...
3. Return of Information...
4. No Obligation...
5. No Warranty....
6. General Provisions...

A) This required section requests information regarding the parties to the Confidentiality Agreement and the reason(s) why the Agreement is being made.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
B) This required section explains what the parties mean by the use of the term "Confidential Information."
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
C) This required section explains the Recipient's obligation to protect the information from possible disclosure to third parties.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
D) This optional paragraph requires the Recipient to return the Confidential Information to the Body Owner at the request of the Body Owner.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
E) This optional section indicates that the Body Owner is not making any warranties to the Recipient regarding the Confidential Information.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
F) This optional provision confirms that the Recipient has only the right to use the Confidential Information for the limited purpose(s) stated at the beginning of the Agreement.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
G) This required section provides general provisions that should be included.
H) This optional section allows for additional provisions of your choosing.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
I) This required section provides signature lines for the parties.

The Confidentiality Agreement is an agreement under which a party (a Recipient) agrees to maintain confidentiality regarding proprietary information that it receives from another party (an Body Owner). Enter a term that will be used in the Agreement as an abbreviated version of the Body Owner's name. For example, if the party's name is "Jane Doe", enter "Bodiesİ INCorporated Jane Doe."Enter the name of the person or entity (the "Body Owner") that owns the Confidential Information that is to be disclosed under this Agreement or edit the information as desired. Enter the name of the person or entity (the "Recipient") who the Confidential Information will be disclosed to.

CONFIDENTIALITY AGREEMENT
This Confidentiality Agreement (this "Agreement") is made effective immediately. In this Agreement, the party who owns the Body will be referred to as "X," and the party to whom the Body will be disclosed will be referred to as "Y." "Z" will protect the confidential material and information which may be disclosed between "X" and "Y." Therefore, the parties agree as follows: Enter the name of the person or entity (the "Body Owner") that owns the Body that is to be disclosed under this Agreement or edit the information as desired. Enter the Body Owner's street address. Enter the Body Owner's city or edit the information as desired. Enter the Body Owner's state/province or edit the information as desired. Enter the Body Owner's zip/postal code or edit the information as desired. Enter the country. Enter a brief description of the Body Owner's business or activities that involve the confidential information. For example, Body Owner is engaged in "the business of manufacturing computer memory."Enter a brief description of the Recipient's business or relationship to the Body Owner. For example, The Recipient is engaged in "marketing computer memory." Enter a brief explanation of why the confidential information will be disclosed to the Recipient. When done, please submit.

[Member SUBMITs]

CONGRATULATONS!
You are now free to go anywhere and free to do and/or buy anything. TOTAL democracy reigns supreme, and happy consumers are handsomely rewarded. You enter Showplace!!!İ INCorporated. Immediately available is a mirror image of your self. The camera zooms in, you feel an enormously warm and glowing light directly above you. Your image is projected onto a large billboard that millions of people are viewing. Appearing larger than life gets you sexually aroused. You are being watched by countless eyes and through multiple lenses -- all in sharp focus. Thousands upon thousands of corporate logos, from every imaginable hardware and software company, fly around you, making a hypnotic hum. You reach out for the newest, shiniest, most improved item, and type in your credit number.

Artaud says: "I renounce nothing of that which is the Mind. I want only to transport my mind elsewhere with its laws and organs. I do not surrender myself to the sexual mechanism of the mind, but on the contrary within this mechanism I seek to isolate those discoveries which lucid reason does not provide. I surrender to the fever of dreams, but only in order to derive from them new laws. I seek multiplication, subtlety, the intellectual eye in delirium, not rash vaticination. There is a knife which I do not forget."[7]

You move through the space and notice discussion forums, bodies to view, a special section of star/featured bodies, and people crowded about betting on what appears to be text scrolling by announcing something related to the prospect of death and dying ("deadpools"). You enter a discussion forum and witnesses a "live" chat session (the Topic of the Day) linked to a special issue of _SPEED_; there are constant interruptions by flying logos with embedded commercials.

You go to view the 'body of the month' (announced earlier over the public PA), and notice its impressive CV (with an extensive exhibition record), beautiful auratic lighting, tracking cameras, embedded textures updated in real-time, streaming sounds, collision detection, java applets, and shockwave animations. You realize that this is no mere appropriation, but an incredibly elaborate customization -- the code is untouchable, impenetrable, uncrackable. You know that you'd need years of training to achieve this level, and wonder if perhaps what you are contemplating is an archiText writ large. You are overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, and question if you'll ever be able to achieve the level of proficiency needed to achieve such a state. You suffer a bad case of Member envy.

"Thus I shall have to be satisfied" Freud says "with evident dissatisfaction. If I succeed in deriving the core of his delusional formation with some certainty from familiar human motives."[8]

NECROPOLISİ INCorporated

A wind whispers in from the East, blowing across the terrain of Necropolisİ INCorporated. A scent of fire and incense wrapped in a darkly shrouded mist rolls in softly with the ash, enveloping your being. You are gently summoned to enter the dark and foreboding, yet oddly inviting Necropolisİ INCorporated. You come to the sudden realization that your desire for rational and calculated control has more to do with a drive toward death than with a love of life.

[Member friendly female voice...]
"Here to LOOK or to DIE?"

[Member DIEs]

DONOR DATA

1. Information...
2. Donation...
3. Designation of Organs...
4. Designation of Use Special Limitations...
5. Designation of Donee...
6. Revocation or Amendment...
7. SeverabilitySignature...

A) This required section provides information regarding an individual's consent to donate or the refusal to donate organs or tissues. There are no entry fields in this section.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
B) This required section includes the Donor's name and address. The Donor is the individual who is donating organs, tissues, or body parts to be removed after the Donor's death.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
C) This required section allows the Donor to indicate specific limitations or wishes concerning the donation of the Donor's organs, tissues, or body parts.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
D) This optional section allows the Donor to designate an individual or institution to receive the donation (the "Donee").
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
E) This optional section revokes or amends any prior documents and should be completed by any Donor who has previously completed an organ donation form or a "refusal to donate form."
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.
F) This required section provides that the inclusion of an invalid request or instruction does not invalidate the other provisions of the document.
-- Press [Ctrl+D] for more information.

Enter the Member's state of residence. Enter an X if the Member wishes to donate any needed organs, tissues, or body parts. The Member must also initial this choice on the printed form. Enter an X if the Member wishes to donate any needed organs, tissues, or parts except one or two specific organs. The Member must also initial this choice on the printed form. Use this space to describe which organs are NOT to be donated. For example, "heart" or "eyes." This option allows the Member to state which specific organs, tissues, or parts to donate. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate the heart at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate heart valves at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate lungs at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate kidneys at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate the liver at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate the pancreas at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate intestines at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate bone at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate skin at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate blood vessels at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate eyes at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate musculoskeletal structures (for example, tendons or ligaments) at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate body fluids at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate other tissue or cells at death. Enter an X if the Member desires to donate a pacemaker at death.

[Member SUBMITs]

Surprisingly the death space is flooded with a beautiful soft light, and covered with fabulous floral arrangements. The flowers, all preserved with silicon, have tremendous lifespans. You begin scrolling through the endless Methods of Death list...

#2005: asphyxiated with black plastic bag
#2000: guts slit and the half-digested food in your intestines munched on by a sexually dysfunctional lumberjack
#1800: dismembered and a magic stew made out of your heart, genitals and spine
#1003: skull crushed with a rock
#0102: dismembered and stuffed in pillowcases
#0101: passed away during sleep
#0092: sodomized before and after being decapitated
#0091: handcuffed, anally raped, and beaten to a pulp, while offered peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, being recited verses from the bible, and getting strangled
#0089: turned into a zombie by after receiving a homemade lobotomy and having acid poured into body cavities
#0088: mangled by a man who implanted needles in his genitalia, stuffed his asshole with flaming alcohol balls, ate shit, killed children and made stews with their remains
#0087: rendered unconscious and then strangled and fucked simultaneously
#0086: shot by a man who came in your mouth just before chopping your head off
#0085: your blood drained and blended with body organs and drunk by a man in order to stop his own blood from turning into powder
#0084: brutally raped and strangled and dumped in a neighboring village that bore the same first letter as your e-mail address
#0023: terminally dehydrated from colon cancer
#0009: choked on your own vomit[9]

You take a deep breath, and decide to put your body to rest during sleep (death method #0101). Almost instanatneously, just prior to pressing the KILL button, you are presented with an O-Bit page to fill out. The results of your self-inflicted memorium will be announced to the entire community of Body Owners. Because of the incredibly spectacular public nature of the announcement heralding your Body's passing, you decide to take extra time with wording your obituary. It is with great relief that you press the "KILL" command.

[Member KILLs]

A Vortex Vector unexpectedly sucks you into a deep indigo blue space with no sound, text, or conceptual reference points. Just as you start feeling the infinite transitional possibilities dis- place offers, you emerge at the Home of Bodiesİ INCorporated.

HOMEİ INCorporated

Welcome to Bodiesİ INCorporated. The building elements at your disposal are ASCII text, simple geometric forms, TEXTures, and low resolution sound. Bodies built become your personal property, operating in and circulating through public space, free to be downloaded into your private hard drive/communication system at any time. The MOO/WOO functions as an institution through which your body gets shaped in the process of identity construction that occurs in, and mutually implicates, both the symbolic and material realms.

BODY CONSTRUCTION ORDER FORM

[Member friendly female voice...]
"Please complete the form below and answer the questions carefully. It should only take a few minutes of your time."

NOTES

1. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London, the Athlone Press. 1988. pg. 150.
2. Bohm, David. Quantum Theory. New York: Prentice-Hall. 1951. p. 415.
3. Vesna, Victoria and Robert Nideffer. Bodiesİ INCorporated: Theoretical Appropriation for Somatic Intervention. 1996.
4. Stein, Dorothy. Ada: A Life and a Legacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1985. p. 72.
5. Bataille, Georges. Erotism: Death & Sensuality. San Francisco: City Lights Books. 1986. p. 82.
6. Bodiesİ INCorporated.
7. Artaud, Antonin. Selected Writings Susan Sontag (ed.); translated from the French by Helen Weaver. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1976.
8. Gay, Peter. Freud: A Life for Our Time. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 1988. pp. 283.
9. http://www.mayhem.net/crime/archives.html

Return to Bodiesİ INCorporated: Organizational History