Analysis of the Field
and Terms Used
#The (Absent) Body in the Network

In his book Network Aesthetics, Jagoda (2016) discusses the long history of the word “network” and states that networks have become “practically ubiquitous as both literal infrastructures and figurative tropes”, so ontologically slippery that it is “far too easily taken up as a term that we should already know”. We use the term to refer not only to natural biological structures such as neural networks in the brain, but also to economic systems, computing systems, terrorist organisations, social media, traffic patterns and as “metaphors for relationality and a non-hierarchical model of interconnection”.

 

Despite the term network becoming a cliché, however, it is rare to find any discussion of the body when discussing network culture. This disappearance of the body has been noted by feminist critics such as White, who writes that “Internet and computer technologies are associated with disembodiment” (White 2009). The body disappears, replaced by digital systems and digit-based interfaces such as the keyboard and mouse.

 

This absent body is all the more paradoxical considering the increasing surveillance and codification of the body by technology through multitudes of cameras, devices and sensors constantly uploading our data into the network. Our uneasy relationship with technology also often centres around our body, with anxieties about AI bias from our physical appearance, biodata privacy and deepfakes as prime examples.

 

In this research, then, I focus on the role of the body as central to my inquiry. Thinking about networks becomes useful not only to inform my creative practice, but the creative outcomes themselves seek to expose the workings of the network and the embedded role of the body within it.

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