Re-becoming human: restoring critical feeling through ludic performance
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Authors
Boisvert, Heidi J.
Issue Date
2015-08
Type
Electronic thesis
Thesis
Thesis
Language
ENG
Keywords
Electronic arts
Alternative Title
Abstract
Our current intelligent technologies, namely the Internet, mobile devices, and now immersive displays and wearables, are numbing our biological self through a form of what Marshall McLuhan referred to as “self-amputation.” This dissertation is a critical examination and creative re-envisioning of the legacy of cybernetics. It seeks to both interrogate the underlying rhetoric fueling the post-biological technocracy to which we are unconsciously ceding control of our cognitive and affective faculties, and also explores how embodied, bio-adaptive game-based networked performance practices can serve as an antidote, restoring critical feeling. Through two case studies of my own interdisciplinary collaborations, [radical] signs of life and Beware of the Dandelions, this practice-based research attempts to recuperate the biological self by 1) re-inscribing the body, affect and the senses into current techno-utopian discourse, and 2) re-stimulating the peripheral nervous system through biomedia , performative gesture and socio-collaborative play.
Description
August 2015
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Full Citation
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY