Annotated Webliography - Joey Wong

Q.1 ‘Why should our bodies end at skin?’ asks Donna Haraway. Discuss the idea of skin in relation to how we might imagine our future embodiment.

Source 1:
Schick Lea, Malmborg Lone (2009)
‘Unfolding and Refolding Embodiment into the Landscape of Ubiquitous Computing.’
This article is written by Schick Lea and Malmborg Lone, they were both from the IT University of Copenhagen. Also they were interested in ubiquitous computing as well as synkinesthetic interaction and embodied interaction. The article was a peer view document in University of California, Irvine. It is a very up to date document which was written in 2009 and it contains comprehensive and informative information. Therefore, I think this article is distinguished as a useful material for answering the question.

In this article, the authors pointed out some interesting ideas that related to the Donna Haraway’s statement. In the abstract, they have already said that ‘an unfold body that doesn’t end at one’s skin, but emerges as intercorporeality between bodies and the technological environment.’ The unfold body they mentions in the article refers to the body that unfolds into a pervasive and ubiquitous techno-sphere. They believed the embodiment will not be able to separate from the place we live where technology is occupied.

Moreover, in the main body of the article, authors said that ‘The shared embodiment is not something that threatens our notion of the body, but it is rather another state of the same body’. That means our body or embodiment will need to change when the environment where we live is interacting with variations. Consequently the authors at the end expressed that people should open up their bodies to the changing world and implied that people will be lived in a new space where to develop and take a new shape.

Source 2:
Samuel Dokko (2007)
‘Cyborg Bodies in Medicine.’
The article was found in the website which was called Cyborg Data Base. This site was founded by undergraduate research seminar members at the University of California. It is an ongoing database and map of our emerging cyborg society. The article that I chose from the site is titled Cyborg Bodies in Medicine and author’s name was Samuel Dokko. This is a delight article and about the relationship between human, technology and medicine. The reason I chose this article is because human can not live without medicine and technology keeps improving medicine’s effects.

In the article, the author said ‘there are cyborgs walking and living among us…but are like regular humans… medical cyborg’. This statement implied that human could be mixed with metal and flesh. Same as the authors of the first source, Samuel Dokko agreed that human is needed to change and to adapt to different situations, so cyborg medicine is one of the ways for people to be seasoned with changing environment.

The author pointed out that artificial organ is the most commonly used technology to restore patients’’ life. He also mentioned that more patient exceed their normal faculties through implant, such as cochlear implant. And he described these kinds of patient as an enhanced cyborg.

Source 3:
Claudia Castaneda (2001)
‘Thinking Through the Skin.’
The website actually is founded by the Google and it contains many different kinds of books, ‘Thinking Through the Skin’ is one of them. The chapter titled Robotic skin was written by Claudia Castaneda, and begins with a question ‘Can robots have skin?’ This question is very eye-catching that make me think about ‘does the robot have a human-like outlook’ and ‘is the skin owner a cyborg?’ Then further think about the question that what our body look like in the future.

The chapter mentioned ‘if we (former human) are already cyborgs, then how might a focus on skin enable both the difference between cyborgs, and the nature of their encounter, to be thought?’ This statement gives me a signal that ‘skin’ is not the thing to distinguish what is a human and what is a machine, a human could have a part of metal or a robot could have human-like emotion. This chapter is a very stimulative material to clarify the idea of cyborg and skin. It provides readers a lot of clues to think about the question again, such as some definitions and question that the author asks.

Source 4:
Susan Ballard
‘My viewing body does not end at the skin. (1).’
The article is written by Susan Ballard who was a lecturer in Art History and Theory at the School of Art, Otago Polytechnic, in Dunedin New Zealand. Her interested areas are issues surrounding the production and relationships between art, technology and the body etc. Therefore her article is the recognized one for me to answer the question.

‘The borders of the body and machine are merged and reconstructed, the body is dis-organ-ised … and generated across the surfaces of multiple bodies and technologies.’ The author analysed in the way that technology enters to human bodies on a molecular level and makes a novel understanding of the somatic body. She also said in the article that ‘the boundaries that demarcated the body itself were questioned. Skin was no longer a decisive barrier.’ Implied that the idea of skin makes effect on how we could envisage the embodiment in the future.

Source 5:
Frank Biocca (1997)
‘The Cyborg's Dilemma: Progressive Embodiment in Virtual Environments.’
Dr. Biocca was the Ameritech Professor of Telecommunication and Director of the Media Interface and Network Design. He did researches on exploring human-computer interaction in virtual environments. Dr. Biocca lectured or had been a researcher at Stanford University, the University of California-Berkeley, Duke University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and other universities. So he is a fabulous scholar in the field of cyborg.

In this article, Dr Biocca explored how user evolves as a cyborg, that means ‘The interface is adapting to the body; the body is adapting to the interface’. Also he stated that ‘in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled very tightly’, and implied that the partnership of human brain and the information-handing machine will get a lot closer. He also attached the idea of ‘presence’ embodiment, especially the ‘telepresence’, the sense of being conveyance to another ‘place’ where created by computer, as well as the sensation of being placed in other vacuum than where your body is physically placed.

These kinds of relationships and changes are similar to the previous articles that human is needed to change to fit in the changing world, so it is also relevant to answer the question.

Reference List:
1. Schick Lea, Malmborg Lone (2009) ‘Unfolding and Refolding Embodiment into the Landscape of Ubiquitous Computing.’ http://escholarship.org/uc/item/7t5741s0#page-3 (accessed 16 March 2011)

2. Samuel Dokko (2007) ‘Cyborg Bodies in Medicine.’ http://www.cyborgdb.org/dokko.htm(accessed 16 March 2011)

3. Claudia Castaneda (2001) ‘Thinking Through the Skin.’ http://www.google.com/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=&id=hf50Izr-Wz0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA223&dq=Claudia+Castaneda+(2001)+%E2%80%98Thinking+Through+the+Skin&ots=dR8J1FIITm&sig=5srMDq9U7jLzBjd9J1KcJSs5UJU#v=onepage&q&f=false(accessed 17 March 2011)

4. Susan Ballard ‘My viewing body does not end at the skin. (1).’ http://www.voyd.com/ttlg/textual/ballardessay.htm (accessed 17 March 2011)

5. Frank Biocca (1997) ‘The Cyborg's Dilemma: Progressive Embodiment in Virtual Environments.’ http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol3/issue2/biocca2.html#About (accessed 15 March 2011)