Cyber-Body-Systems

Info

As the physical and digital bodies become increasingly intertwined, we are rapidly reaching a moment where the two become inseparable and almost indistinct, either in industry, social media, art, politics, or healthcare. But how does our body understand and make sense of this digital version of itself? Does this digitization change how we react to our inner and outer environments? Does it make us feel more or less in control? And how do we come to terms with the process of being digitized?

This project explores these questions, acknowledging the invisible aspects of our bodies that are also digitized—our inner processes, thoughts, mental states, and the natural rhythms and reactions of our brains. From a psychological perspective, we aim to understand how we perceive our body’s digital version, especially when this version includes internal processes that we are usually only aware of through self-perception, if at all.

The performer, who knows her body well, faces a challenge when both the physical and invisible elements are transformed into a digital representation of herself in the form of a virtual environment. She must make sense of her body when it is reflected back to her as a landscape that it generates in real-time. Every action, hidden gesture, or thought creates a feedback loop, amplifying the uncontrollable aspects of the process. How does she make sense of actions and the sometimes counterintuitive and unexpected reactions they generate? When blinking has a bigger impact than, for example, moving her whole body? This process of understanding this specific set of abilities and limitations involves a learning loop based on imagination, memory, and repetition, as she observes her physical and mental selves from both outside and within.

In this process, she encounters multiple versions of herself: the physical body she knows, the invisible body made up of thoughts, impulses, and nonconscious actions, and the virtual body. It’s like looking into a more advanced, all-seeing mirror and trying to make sense of what she is creating in real time through her own biological processes. 

The performance explores the paradox of navigating a world generated by one’s own body—a world shaped by blinking, thinking, moving all captured by sensors and translated into digital forms. Every movement and thought, whether conscious or nonconscious, voluntary or involuntary, recorded through EEG and motion capture sensors, changes the emergent virtual landscape in real-time (an ever-evolving collection of data points, lines, sounds and virtual spaces), creating an environment that is constantly shifting and impossible to fully control.