DIGITAL BODY: Horcrux of Extended Self in Post-Human Era

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Literature Innovation in Chinese Language, LIONG 2021, 19-20 October 2021, Purwokerto, Indonesia, 2022

This writing aims to identify hyperdigitalizaion of body in online gaming world. Social perspectives are centered on the effects of using digital media on the body, but most studies tend to focus on health issues. Most biodigital studies are found, which see the body from the perspective of Biology and Health. Other studies from a demographic perspective is also found, such as, the relation between the use of information and communication technology (ITC) and the body. The previous study is about digital body as the horcrux of extended-self in post-human era. The study identified what is (social) digital body definition. It is based on one's media social activities. Yet, there is no reseach found about digital body in other media such as online game as a virtual reality. Frameworks used are Baudrillard's Hyperreality and concepts of digital body, avatar, second-self, game and online gaming. This research is a preliminary research which adopts the qualitative approach, relying primarily on previous research on online gamers and digital body and personal interview to some gamers with body issue. The conclusion is the online gamer body has undergone a physical body process into a virtual body in phases: (1). Physical body, (2). Simulation Body; (3). Digital Body, and (4). Virtual Body. This process namely as hyperdigitalization of body, which can be interpreted as a process of the body being hyper digital. This research also define the characteristics of online game avatar as: Controlled-Dematerialized Self, Reembodiment Self, Social-Supportive Self, In-Group Oriented Self, and Cosmopolitan-self.

„Virtual Art / Virtual Domains of Art”, ART INQUIRY, Volume 10, 2008

The article concerns the description of various phenomena connected with identity, which human can be subjected to in the Net. Accordingly, the processes have been presented which take place mainly within 3D electronics environment. These environments possess an ability to cause a strong immersion, which "engages" human intentionality, and also provides possibility for self-creation. For a description of the phenomena of translocating human activity to the Net, two processes have been indicated: incorporation process, i.e. receiving of an electronic body, e.g. of avatar, and existential process, i.e. human involvement in electronic environment which exceeds the utilitarian aspect. Both processes lead to the state of electronic incarnation, which is not related to any cause of being in the electronics environments, and becomes an autonomous value. Electronic incarnation combines with cultural and anthropological aspects, and has reflection in electronic art. Interrelation between common everyday activity with Net, influences a range of human involvement in the electronic environment, i.e. sometimes changing a user into a participant of immaterial events. On the one hand, such processes reach deeper in human, and secondly, electronic worlds, such as Second Life, create possibilities for finding there spiritual values, emotional life, and the sphere of feelings. Human subjected to immersion can begin specific "journey", starting in front of computer's interface, and ending in the rising of electronic personalityfinding oneself in the reality alternative to the physical world, in the electronic reality.

The advance of digital technologies and evolution of cyberculture have rejuvenated Modernity's Cartesian dream of the pure mind achieving an unconditional freedom by leaving the body behind. The body, now more than ever, is perceived as another object in the external materiality where, as the lineage of Western thought so obstinately insists, the Truth is to be found. Eastern traditions like Sufi mysticism, on the other hand, offer a stark alternative: the physical reality is dismissed as illusion, the search for the Truth is essentially internal, and the self is not a segregated and detached entity but is an ever-interconnected part of the whole. We argue that leveraging both on the ancient wisdom of the East and the immense success of science and technology of the West, cyberculture can foster a new human condition of re-embodiment, interconnectivity, and re-unity. We maintain that contemporary arts, particularly in performative and collaborative forms, have much to contribute to this endeavor, and emerging technologies like biomechatronics and neuroprosthetics, which are acclaimed by some for their assumed contribution to the ideal of disembodiment, might be exploited by artists to promote a new understanding of embodiment and humanity's interconnectedness with the rest of the existence.

Forum for Anthropology and Culture, 2019

The paper deals with the interface of the human body and (new) technologies; its aim being an overview of the field with a purpose to include the relevant topics within the legitimate concerns of anthropology. The author discusses the choice from competing theories and conceptual tools, necessary for the study of corporeality and technology, as well as their interaction. The concepts of body schema and body image serve as conceptual tools and examples of various forms of bodily integration with technical apparatus in different types of media, both real and virtual, offline and online. The analogy between the concept of Umwelt, introduced by German bio-semiotician Jakob von Uexküll for animal perception analysis, and the concept of technosphere by humans, provides a unique perspective on technical milieu as essential part of various human-machine assemblages. It is argued that lived (phenomenological) body, social body and physical body have their own modi of presence and forms of integration with technical objects in different types of virtual and actual reality.

2020

This essay aims to present the various changes in our embodying experience shaped by the new information, virtual, and robotic technologies, as well as their political and moral effect. The essay is also expanded to encapsulate the new conceptions in our approach upon bodily transformation, medicine, and sexuality, strongly interconnected with the above facts. Our analysis is structured in five different categories of embodiment or bodies: bodily governance, transforming bodies, virtual bodies, medical bodies and sexual bodies. The political impact is mainly given though the description of the forms of bodily governance, like personal and biometric data collection used for massive surveillance and as a measure for defining the "ideal'' standards of our social life. The possibilities provided by classical and 3D printed organ transplantation and the use of prosthetic and cosmetic surgeries, lead us to rethink our bodies as transforming or as being in a process of becoming. Our immersion in virtual environments and the use of avatars raise questions upon embodying and disembodying experiences and the formation of our identities in the virtual world. The dominant biomedical model seems to be challenged by more human-based approaches giving emphasis to the subjective narratives of the patient, consequently contributing to a more ethical and non-normative treatment of people with special needs and elder people. Furthermore, the use of robotics in the care of people with mobility or mental problems brings dilemmas in the human-machine interaction and the roles of caregivers, care receivers and robots. Finally after structuralism and poststructuralism, the natural-binary systems have been thoroughly criticized; this fact gave birth to feminist theories which consider gender to have been socially constructed, and the body and therefore the gendered body to be a disembodied prosthesis of information or as a fusion between machine and organism.

Culture & Psychology, 1998

In this chapter I examine the ways in which human bodies interact with and are configured by digital technologies and how these technologies generate new knowledges and practices in relation to bodies. I use infants and young children as a case study to explain these aspects. From before they are even born, children’s bodies are now frequently represented and monitored by digital technologies, including medical imaging and monitoring devices as well as social media sites, surveillance and self-tracking technologies. In my discussion I draw on literature from sociocultural theorising of the body, childhood, digital technologies and big data, particularly that by scholars adopting the sociomaterial perspective. The chapter is divided into two main parts. The first presents a general overview of theoretical approaches to conceptualising the interactions between bodies and technologies, while the second part is devoted to outlining the ways in which infants’ and young children’s bodies are digitised.

Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 2023

The following paper attempts to look at virtual reality technologies—and the (dis)embodiment affected by them—through a phenomenological lens. Specifically, augmenting traditional discussions of virtual reality as a purely technical problem, this paper seeks to bring Maurice Merleau-Ponty's embodied phenomenology into the discussion to try to make sense of both what body we leave behind and what body we gain as we enter virtual worlds. To do this, I look both at historical examples of virtual reality technologies and their methods of (dis)integrating the body and speculative future examples of virtual reality where the corporeal body is fully sidelined through the lens of Merleau-Ponty's account of the body schema, noting that habituation is an ever present factor that must be considered in virtual environments. Ultimately, I conclude that even in a scenario of one-to-one mind-computer transference, the virtual world will, like the physical world we currently inhabit, solicit a 'phantom body' thus forcing us to act and live in accordance with a mutual interplay between self and virtual world.

Angles, 2016

Twenty years ago the adjective 'virtual' was on everyone's lips and widely used to describe the products of new technologies, from videogames to training programmes. What happened beyond the pale of the screen in the depths of computers was labelled 'virtual'. Because these technologies remained opaque for most people, the word took on connotations of mistrust and awe: 'virtual' was the domain of geeks and weirdos, a

DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), 2013