A workshop and exhibit at NeMe in Cyprus where we will create a manifestation of the ubiquitous body: a research on the implications of ubiquitous technologies and the perception of our bodies, their location in time and space, and the opportunities and risks which they bring about. Another collaborative project for La Cura, in which we have manifested a social, techno-emotional body to transform medicine into a participatory performance.

The workshops will take place at the Cyprus University of Technology in Limassol from 16 November – 18 November 2016 at 2:30pm-6:30pm.

Read more on NeMe.

the Ubiquitous Body

the Ubiquitous Body

A body without organs is not an empty body stripped of organs, but a body upon which serves as organs […] is distributed according to crowd phenomena […] in the form of molecular multiplicities.
– Deleuze & Guattari

What is more exciting for the mind than not knowing where it is in relation to its body? Is it a wonder that we have no ways of knowing our own body?
– Paul Valéry

When, where and how are our bodies?

Ubiquitous technologies have enormous effects on the ways in which we perceive our body, our interconnectedness with the rest of the world – whether human or non-human –, our health and well-being.

The body used to be considered a continuous entity of around 1-2 meters in height, solid and coherent.

Images, digital technologies and, even more, wearable and ubiquitous technologies change all that.

Where and when is our body when we are in a chat or videoconference?

Where is our body when it has data captured from it, and sent to servers somewhere on the planet to be processed by algorithms, which will be able to influence anything from our health, finances, entertainment, relations and even our freedom to express and move?

Where is our body when we don’t even have access to this data?

When is our body when we appear in images, videos, recordings, data streams? Or when the images and videos of our bodies are processed through digital effects, filters, algorithms?

Where and when is our body when we collaborate and do things online? And where/when is it when we are in physical space, but something digital, networked, influences how we move it, make gestures, express, or learn and acquire information?

How does this change our own perception of what/where/when/how is “body”?

What are the implications of these phenomena for everything that concerns or freedoms to express, self-represent, self-determine and to operate and collaborate with others?

These are some of the questions we will ask during the workshop in Cyprus.

In La Cura we have had multiple chances to experience and observe what we have called the Ubiquitous Body, a condition in which the body is dispersed, diffused, shared, across time, space and relations, and becomes a platform for the expression, participation and collaboration of myriads of individuals. Whether it is through images, data, interactions, visualizations, or through the multiple ways in which the digital, networked world intertwines with the physical one, the condition of the Ubiquitous Body brought forth both exciting opportunities and troubling issues. Both the possibility to establish active contact and participation with others and the possibility for invasion of our private and intimate spaces. Both the opportunity to experience interconnectedness with others and with the environment, and the possibility of not being fully able to self-express and self-determine.

During the workshop we will create the concept and content of an exhibit which will investigate these aspects through images, objects, devices, continuing the narrative of the Ubiquitous Body starting from where we left off during La Cura Summer School, from the other times which we confronted with this topic on AOS, and from the wider discussion that has been embraced from multiple points of view by scholars, artists, scientists, engineers, designers, philosophers and anthropologists all over the world.

The initiative is sponsored by:

Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture, Medochemie, Limassol Coop bank, Limassol Municipality, Meliton farm.