Dirty bodies and clean technologies: the absent abject body in media arts culture

摘要

My research explores why the abject body is not conceptualised within the idiomof media arts culture. Why is it missing and often edited out of the framework of art and technology? While media arts often rethinks the body and its augmentation and enhancements through new technology, the abject body is often nowhere to be seen. It would appear that the abject body has been disqualified as an aesthetic from the post- humanist paradigm of art and technology. In its place appears to be the transcendence of the body through technology, rather than the base level everyday reminder of our meat bodies. I explore what cultural conditions have led to the erasure of the abject from media arts culture. In addition I look at the cultural history of abject art and the abject body’s relationship to the emerging mediasphere. My own studio work attempts to reactivate, reinsert and reconceptualise the abject body within contemporary media arts.