Theoretical Introduction

The work contained in this eportfolio represents the exploration I engaged with in the first year of my study in the MATX program. These investigations in varied media, though often determined to an extent by the instructor, reflect my research interests. My own explorations revolve around notions of embodiment in the interactions between human and machine. My concerns regarding embodiment encompass research in neuroscience and theories of how enaction influences emotion and subjectivity.

In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles suggests, “the erasure of embodiment is a feature common to both the liberal humanist subject and the cybernetic posthuman. Identified with the rational mind, the liberal subject possessed a body but was not usually represented as being a body” (4). And the posthuman subject is reduced to a flow of information and the “formal manipulation of symbols rather than enaction in the human life-world” (xi). I am interested in looking closer at the ways the body and materiality refuses to be erased.

I am drawn to theories of motor cognition and I am especially interested in recent developments in research into mirror neurons. When we are happy we smile, but scientific research suggest that it is not always emotion that leads the way, in fact, muscle/motor movements and expressions can influence if not bring about a state of emotion. For example, research psychologist Fritz Strack performed experiments in which individuals were asked to hold a pen between their teeth, thus creating the motor muscular equivalent of a smile. These individuals responded more readily to humorous stimuli (772). When we see someone smile we often experience a kind of emotional contagion, and we are inclined to smile as well. Some of this may be related to the function of mirror neurons. V.S. Ramachandran, a researcher in behavioral neurology, describes the effect: “It's as if the neuron (more strictly the network of which the neuron is part) was using the visual input to do a sort of "virtual reality simulation" of the other persons actions—allowing you to empathize with her and view the world from her point of view.”

I explored these concepts in the video piece, Happy. I shot footage of myself attempting a genuine, felt smile. I was playing with the idea that the viewer could be compelled to smile by viewing a sequence of moving images of someone else smiling. I chose to intersperse the images with words alluding to concepts from neuroscience and cognitive psychology with the idea that it might make the viewer peripherally aware of the manipulation, clueing them in on the experiment. I felt the words would elicit self-consciousness and provoke consideration for the complexities of human interaction that take place beyond conscious awareness. I was also curious if the knowledge that some manipulation is taking place would counteract the tendencies of emotional contagion or empathy.

In the flash animation piece, I was again exploring the potential of images to induce emotional response. I chose to work with the word “happy” to create a short animation. The word in isolation can read as a question or a call to experience the emotion the word signifies. I was interested in the effect of movement on the potential to feel the meaning of the word. The letters separate into individual characters and are animated, falling then bouncing and rising back to their starting place. I made each letter into a button that would reveal an image upon roll over. These images represent things associated with positive mood.

I am still investigating the possibilities for the role of sound in this body of work. To aid me in this endeavor, I enrolled in Advanced Sound, a course offered through the Kinetic Imaging department. The first assignment was to create a performative sound piece in response to a work from a short list of word scores. I chose the one written by Mieko Shiomi entitled Boundary Music, it reads as follows: “Make the faintest possible sound to a boundary condition whether the sound is given birth as a sound or not. At the performance, instruments, human bodies, electronic apparatus or anything else may be used.”

I was intrigued by the idea of a sound not given birth to as a sound. I chose to use my body against the “boundary condition” of the floor, an old, creaky, wooden floor. The sounds made by my feet upon the floor arise from an inevitable, daily interaction with the built environment. I placed a contact microphone on the surface of the boards, and I walked slowly in a circular motion around it. I was attempting to make the “faintest possible sound” against this integral part of the architectural structure, that which supports the body but also isolates the body from the space of another.

In the audio piece, A Built in Brain, I have merged bodies and technology, intermingling the human voice with machine sounds. The voice is taken from recordings of the 1950s in which people are speaking of the marvels of modern technology. I have taken only fragments of the voice and used them to create repeating loops. The loops themselves become repetitive, insistent, and mechanistic. The machine sounds are equally repetitive, but also rhythmic and reministent of the bodily processes of breathing and circulating fluid.

Works Cited

Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Strack, F., L.L. Martin, and S. Stepper. Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of facial expressions: a non-obtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54 (1988): 768–777.

Ramachandran, V. S. Self Awareness: The last Frontier. Edge.com. 2009. 24 August 2009 < http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/rama08/rama08_index.html>.