Oh yes I do. I create you in 'virtual space.' You don't exist where I am; I don't exist where you are. You are embedded in the digital data that I reframe, reinterpret, transmute and transform into recognizable text, image, sound. You are a binary digit. I am a binary digit. We frame each other. We exist through each other's filters. We are a "consensual hallucination." You appear as a reconstituted body, or a map of pixels, however you prefer. I am a refreshed flicker on your screen. We expand the indeterminism of our bodies by communicating this way. Perhaps you are a preconstituted frame, how am I to know? I participate in the process of reforming you, your words, your photos, your audio clips, in my own image. The "place" where we meet is a vague concretized space; wherever it is, we both meet here often. The result of our "body-brain achievement" is that we have intercepted the stream of data and created each other virtually in virtual space; we've created "an internal bodily space for sensation." Hmnn. Did you know that? "Digital data is at heart polymorphous"; now, now... don't you think that's going too far?
From notes from my sojourn to the Toronto Reference Library this afternoon where I browsed Mark Hanson's, New Philosophy for New Media (MIT Press, 2004), thanks to delightful & inspiring email conversations with Mary Godwin of Body Electric.
Sheath of feeling. Words groping to touch air.
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Brenda,
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting... I read over this twice, and I think... you know, I feel myself that I have met you, and, really, I have never seen you or even heard your voice without it first being turned into and sent via particles of light and energy... but then, i was thinking, what really *is* this world, besides a collection of particles of light and energy. just like i can't really know who you are through the web, do i really know who anyone is, even someone standing in front of me? isn't this entire universe a hologram, with no one knowing what is and what isn't?
deep thoughts. i'll be thinking on this one for awhile...
Rachel
PS. thank you for your comment on dance and healing. i'm looking into this more.
Rachel, we are ultimately all unknowable particles of light, that's a beautiful way to put it. In person, though, we have a much richer range of impressions and sensations to choose from in our understanding of another than we do in the filtered, mediated framing of digital media. But I do agree with you, something transcends the limitations of this media, too. Lifelong friendship can happen even as we beam ourselves in packets of energy and light to each other... *hugs xo
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