Meatspace

Full description

Background
My research explores the nexus between the human body and contemporary media. This research, develops on from a PhD I completed on the topic of the abject body and technology in 2014. The broad field of this research is ‘art & technology’ and the narrow field is ‘representations of the body’. In addition, the research relates to the discourses of media installation art. My new work Meatspace extends this research further into the space of Virtual Reality. Initially the term Meatspace, was one of derision, first coined in the mid 1990’s first wave of VR (Virtual Reality) for those trapped by their flesh and the limitations of their bodies, this new research attempts to bring new and updated knowledge to the relationship of the body and VR.

Contribution
Meatspace extends my research into the confrontation of the human body into VR. One of the dominant narratives of VR is the idea of leaving our bodies behind in a wonderous unbounded new space of infinite possibilities. Running counter to this is the very real experience that VR at times can induce feelings of motion sickness and nausea, where our bodies are not absent but very much present. On one hand VR is all about the non-body but at the same time it dramatically amplifies the notion of embodiment, of being in a body. My research contributes to a better understanding of body awareness and confrontation in VR.

Significance
The work was funded by a city of Melbourne grant ($12,000) and assessed by a group of my peers. Meatspace was seen by a large audience in the newly refurbished Capitol Theatre. The work has since been exhibited at The Ann Arbor film festival in Detroit (as an online version due to Covid 19) The Ann Arbor film festival is the oldest experimental film festival in North America and was voted #1 film festival in North America in a USA Today reader’s poll in 2019.