Digital Embodiment and the Arts : Exploring Hybrid Spaces through Emerging Technologies

A timely examination of the use of emerging technologies in the arts in recent decades.

This book explores the notion of embodied experience from the first wave of virtual reality through the current use of mixed, augmented, and extended realities. It highlights the necessity of understanding technological experiences through the assumption that all experience is embodied. Access to new technological tools has given way to an explosion of digital culture and experience, allowing artists and creative practitioners new ways of exploring a hybridization of creative practices. While individual aspects and themes covered here can be found in some recent books, few place digital embodiment within the arts in the way this book does. 

This unique synthesis first analyzes embodied experience through a study of space and virtuality, imagination, and technology. It next lays the groundwork for a more explicit understanding of the role of the body in our engagement with digital technologies, focusing on three distinct bodies: the gravitational body, the virtual body, and the hybrid body. The final section is a chronological exploration of the technological developments of virtual reality, virtual worlds, and augmented, mixed, and extended realities.
 

A timely examination of the use of emerging technologies in the arts in recent decades, from the first wave of Virtual Reality through to the current use of Mixed, Augmented and Extended Realities. It highlights the necessity of understanding technological experiences through the assumption that all experience is embodied. An explosion of digital culture and experience has most certainly given artists and creative practitioners new ways of exploring a hybridisation of creative practices with access to technological tools only previously dreamt of. Further, there are a number of threads around digital embodiment and its centrality to the digital experience. The book is divided into 3: Section 1 explores the whole notion of embodied experience through a study of space and virtuality, imagination, and technology. Section 2 lays the ground for a more explicit understanding of the role the body has in our engagement with the digital technologies focussing on three distinct bodies: the  gravitational body, the virtual body, and finally the hybrid body. Section 3 is split into three chronological chapters in terms of technological developments, that of VR, Virtual Worlds, and Augmented, Mixed, and Extended Realities. While individual aspects and themes covered here can be found in some recent books, there is little that places digital embodiment within the arts in the way this book does. A unique synthesis.