For the last 20 or so years, this author as a media artist has been constantly interested in the topics of nature and mankind, natural light and artificial light, and substantiality and virtuality and explored how the body movement can be expressed th...
For the last 20 or so years, this author as a media artist has been constantly interested in the topics of nature and mankind, natural light and artificial light, and substantiality and virtuality and explored how the body movement can be expressed through media. Particularly, from the early 2000's, this researcher has been doing experiments on various media decisively by using the body itself and its movement. From 2008, the work was intended to convert the body movement into the traces of LED light. Lately, this researcher is extending the area of work with an attempt to combine her media art with a dancer’s dancing through collaborative performance with the dancer.
The purpose of this study is to consider how physicality can be extended in media performance art combined with digital technology. This researcher is going to examine how the concept of physicality has been changed by time with philosophical as well as art historical approaches to the discourse of physicality and figure out the meaning of physicality in contemporary art and media performance. Moreover, this author will establish the philosophical background of her works and discrimination of them in expressing physicality in order to lay the theoretical grounds for the world of her works firmly.
Questions to be dealt with here in this study intensively are as follows. First, how are they discoursing on physicality in philosophical and art historical perspectives? Second, what meaning does physicality have in contemporary media performance? Third, in what ways, is this researcher’s exploration on physicality extended with her works? The contents can be summed up with three areas above.
Based on her consciousness of the matters, in Chapter 2, theoretical consideration is done over media art and performance to understand the concept and characteristics of media performance art. In Section 1 of Chapter 3, how the concept of physicality has been changed by time is examined with philosophical and art historical approaches to it. In the history of philosophy, the body has been discussed as something to overcome in terms of dualism and as a medium to experience the world. In the history of art, the body is used as the material of works to reveal the theme. Meanwhile, particularly after the 1990's, various aspects are found like the extension of experience about the world including digital transformation on the body through scientific technology. Based on that, in Section 2, three teams are selected from overseas cases of media performance to enhance physicality and then analyzed. It has been found that in those works, physicality is stressed through technology to extend the body visually; however, with technology to make the body and media react in real-time, it is possible to extend time and space through mutual communication between the real body and the virtual body image.
In Chapter 4, based on the discussion above, this author divides her works of media art exploring physicality from the early 2000's up to now largely with three periods and analyzes them. The first period was when she did experiments on the body movement and media. The second period was when she explored the re-mediation of the body image. There are works titled as Sign converting the body movement into the digital pixels of LED dots and Flow re-mediating it into a painting. The third period was when she stressed interactive elements allowing interaction between the body and media by using digital technology and programs for the body movement or pursued combination between a real dancer’s movement and virtual body image.
This study is significant in that it has considered the discourse of media performance and physicality that has been dealt with in the perspective of dance studies so far here in philosophical and art historical perspectives with the world of this researcher’s own works. In the perspective of dance studies, media are regarded as an auxiliary means simply to highlight dance; however, this author sees that the extension of physicality has been realized through media performance art using media. This thesis has examined how the discourse of physicality has been changed with philosophical and art historical approaches and analyzed overseas cases of media performance in which physicality is extended. According to the results, physicality found in today’s contemporary media performance can be extended to ‘digital physicality’.
This is also revealed from the fact that exploration on physicality that started from the initial stage of this author’s work is extended into ‘re-mediated physicality’ or ‘digital physicality’ from ‘experiments on media for the body movement’. It led to the digital extension of the body image through interactivity particularly from this researcher’s media performance work, New Forms. In Pass, live elements like music or installation elements like structures are stressed that it produces contexts for transforming the dancer’s body and physicality as digital images. Also, digital physicality shown in Transcendence realized extension into the body as a place beyond time and space and as a place where substantiality and virtuality coexist, and it was employed as a device that connects the past to the present, with fortified visuality.
Also, this research on media performance equipped with collaborative and trans-border characteristics can be presented not as the concept merely extended from performing arts but in the perspective of ‘holistic art’ in today’s contemporary art. If we see that the elements of an individual sense should be understood in consideration of ‘the body’ that works holistically, the topic of this study, ‘the extension of physicality’, can be regarded significant as part of the effort to overcome the limitations of research on media performance that may easily end up being an analysis only dealing with the vision.