4.9.1 On the Internet the curious mix of entrepreneurial motivations with New Age concepts are most intriguing. I find this intersection to be the locus of network identity. During the course of my PhD research I conceived and created a project to address these issues: Bodies Incorporated. Although informed by the research conducted for my PhD studies, it was initiated by another project, Virtual Concrete, which consisted of a nine- foot concrete walkway covered with photographic imprints of a male and female body covered with chips and text. The audience was invited to walk on the bodies, while a CU-See me camera recorded the action, sending it out to the Internet. I felt that the physical installation was successfully interactive with the audience but that the online version was passive transmission of the action summoning no participation from the viewer. My solution was to create a questionnaire asking those who would log on to order their own imaginary body. [6] It never crossed my mind to take it much further from the conceptual realm, but the audience wanted more. The response was overwhelming, and very soon demands came in from the participants to "see" their bodies. I found myself in a creative impasse considering the implications of physical representation and how one would approach such a problem. Finally, I arrived at the location of the contradictory space our projections occupy in "cyberspace." This seemingly democratic space was in fact propelled by large corporations, and as we become incorporated into it, we also enter a collective state which could mean loss of identity or gain of collective consciousness. It is a marketplace, it is an imaginary space.

4.9.2 The shift from "the body" to bodies was deliberate, implying a shift from the singular person to a collective body. The logo of the project is a bronze head with a copyright sign on its third eye, signifying the inherent contradiction of efforts to control information flow. Once the participants enter the project, they clicks through a series of legal notifications. The assumption is that they are not reading the documents, which basically take away all their rights. This is meant to alert the participant of the legal issues attached to their navigation through information space. Upon entering into the main site, the participants are invited to create their own bodies and become "members." They have a choice of twelve textures with attached meanings, which are a combination of alchemical properties and marketing strategies. The body parts are female, male, and infantile, left and right leg and arms, torso and head. There are also twelve sounds to be attached to the body. The body is named and given attached handling directions and comments. Once submitted to the system, it becomes incorporated into the database and a message is automatically sent to the member via their e-mail address. At this point, you may move through three different spaces: Home, Limbo, Necropolis and Showplace. Home is a large motherboard with rules and regulations drawn from Irvine, a tightly ordered planned community. Limbo is where the bodies are reduced to text-files if they do not follow the rules and regulations. Necropolis was devised for deletion of bodies. There are many different methods of death taken from the crime archives on the Internet, participants have to choose a method, write an o-bit, and construct a grave. It is meant to make one realise how difficult it is to delete a digital body. (Vesna, 1999. pp 33 - 37) Showplace was devised to address exhibition not only online but in privileged physical spaces such as galleries and museums. My problem was how to exhibit in a gallery space and not compromise the work that is devised to exist on the net. It is highly unsatisfying to simply put a computer with a connection and a projector in a gallery. I decided to approach this by treating each site "case by case" and making it "site specific." The challenge was not only how to negotiate the virtual and physical spaces, but also the local and the global. My solution was to start showing local bodies of a particular site and have the participants become an active part of the exhibition process. This, in my opinion, worked really well. For instance, while I was in residence at the Art House in Dublin, I spent time creating bodies with people who were recommended by the curator, as well as the curator himself. [8]

4.9.3 Bodies INCorporated was a result of research into avatars and a direct response to audience demand. People wanted to see their bodies, and after giving it some thought my response was to create a space where they would not only see bodies but also think about the larger implications of projection of physical self in this environment. The experience has made me definitely committed to the idea of 'audience-driven' work on the net.

4.9.4 Two aspects continued to intrigue me about the work: the ever-growing database and the new demand for "community." In the next two chapters I will discuss the results of my research into the meaning of working with database as an aesthetic, and in the chapter that follows that one, the meaning of community. Both issues directly inform the conceptualisation of the Information Personae as well as projects which will emerge in the future. [top]