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| I. Hypercortex, Grotesque Body, Cyborg. "Monsters signify" McLuhan writes, "all human artifacts are extensions of man” and we are approaching the state of “the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society."(2)(3) This transformation possibly leads us to the new stage of communication that Levy calls "collective intelligence". The new technologies of communication through virtual world have affected not only the formation of the problem of the social bond, but also our intellectual capability with "the development of digitally controlled cognitive prostheses” as if the mutations happen in our genetic heritage. As the subtitle of his book, For the Anthropology of Cyberspace (Pour une Anthropolotie de Cyberspace) implies, he again proposes "humanization, the process of the emergence of the human species, is not over. In fact it seems to be sharply accelerating."(4) Ascott also anticipated the collective brain called the "hypercortex" in his article, Telenoia. (5) Am I addicted to the internet? Without it I feel a part of my body has been amputated. Increasingly, I use Google and my cell phone to assist my memory. Sometimes my brain idles without the extended memory system created by the networked devices of the modern age. In cyberspace, physical distances evaporate and the isolated life rooted in a permanent abode is shaken. The space is "deterritorialized" by immediacy and simultaneity, replacing territorial fixation of the earth. (6) It is also a hybrid space where identity and otherness are coexisting according to Lee in his book, Cyber Culture and Temptation of Art. Lee explains that one in cyberspace shares a place with others and the one accepts overlapping states with different selves. He noted that, in this situation, one's identity is being intruded upon by otherness constantly. As a result, “they are dematerialized like images to mingle with others and to transform, constantly in flux. Thus, hybridization and transmutation become ordinary in cyberspace." (7) Within the paradigm of our era, the body transforms into a cyborg, "a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction," as defined by Haraway. (8) The cyborg treads in the realms of both the cyber and real worlds. It can breathe through any kind of medium and is in actuality a medium itself. Unlike the traditional belief of “having” an emotion inside of you, an emotion may not be a substantial presence inside of yourself but the deformation of the relationship between you and others. When you express your anger, there is no emotional transference but only your bodily gestures are presented to the other. The others read it based on the meaning of the gesture in themselves. Merleau-Ponty described it as my intention living in the other’s body and the other’s intention living in mine. Let me say that it is the body that communicates. (9) Performance art enjoyed significant growth in the visual art contexts in the 1970s. This form of communication through the body had to be recorded with new media forms such as photography and video for audiences who were not present at the performance. Thus the strong bond between body art and video art started. TV Bra for Living Sculpture (1969) by Nam June Paik, the pioneer of video art (or media art), shows a body presenting through the hybrid language of its performance, music, and two TVs attached to the body. Like the Open Book (1974) by Vito Acconci showing a wide-open mouth speaking words painfully in an intimidating close-shot and Bruce Nauman's performance of bouncing himself at the corner of walls (Bouncing in the Corner, 1968), the body is not only an apparatus for phonation but a visual medium of communication in many video art works based on performance. Considering the unruly or uncanny bodies in 1970s' video art, the 1980’s appearance of the grotesque body is not surprising. Not a Jealous Bone (1987) by Cecilia Condit shows an old pregnant woman's body that is disagreeable to societal norms. Tony Oursler deforms a body image by projecting a part of it onto an object. Paul McCarthy, Matthew Barney and Cindy Sherman aggressively transform their own bodies into grotesque forms using special make-up techniques. Many commercial movies and music videos such as Ridley Scott’s Alien and Chris Cunningham's videos keep creating grotesque images of bodies as well. Many of my previous video works including Maskgirl (2000) and the Unknown Zone series (2002-2003) also speak to audiences with the power of grotesque body images. Kim remarks that the body art in 1990s started to use fake bodies such as mannequins or dolls replacing the human body and predicted that the grotesque body is potentially evolving into the cyborg. (10) After several experiments of interconnecting human body and machine organs for the last two years, my current researches are also evolving into the interface that interconnects different organs and turns the performer or participant into the cyborg having an extended and more expressive body. The Intruder project is designed to hybridize one of three participants through the web as an incorporeal organ. In the mean while, Larynxiens (working title) is expected to transform the performer into a cyborg with a speaking body with newly embedded machine organs, i.e. wearable directional speakers. Evolution is accelerating in media art. A large number of media artists including Lynn Hershmann and Stelarc have attempted to extend their body into a cyberspace using new technologies in robotics, biology, and computer science. As a quite extensive amount of investigation is necessary to cover the cyborg theme, which is broadly adopted in media art, my research on this theme will be continued. II. Cyborg Communication, Projection, Incarnation "The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception." The beauty in art does not have a fixed reality. An artwork brings materials and ideas through poetic concept and expressions to a new context of different significance from the obsolescent frame. Cyborg communication also enlarges the area of communication by liberating it from the illusion of normality. Along with the necessity of machine organs, my work focuses on the organs of transmission hybridized into human body that generate the cyborg communications. Non-material touches such as light, sound and smell projection can be languages for a new extended body as a result of hybridization with the hypercortex. Once as art college freshmen, my classmates and I were given small wooden boxes and told to make an artwork from them. At that time, I was very attracted to In Search of Lost Time"(À la Recherche du Temps Perdu) by Proust and the fragrance of madeleine staying at the tip of my nose was drawing the colors and smells of the Proust's world around me. I abstractly perceived that the madeleine resembles art, which unleashes non-material touches hidden in the obsolescent body. I sprayed a fragrance into the box and presented it. My recent works use these non-material touches with mainly light and sound projections. Projection has a broad definition from a visualization mechanism in neurology to a self-protection mechanism in psychology. Like the world through Alice’s looking glass, projective planes in mathematics define an identity appearing completely different in the worlds of various dimensions. I also see the projection as the relationship of recognizing and communicating between one and others. Along all these “inter” and “trans” characteristics, projection, as it is an organ of communication, embraces all kinds of surfaces and spaces, unlike a big monument violently overpowering a space. Therefore projection is a perfect language for the cyborg that accepts differences and hybridizes outer world inside of its body instead of violent and deforming conflicts. However, questions always stay with me. Why do I use new technologies instead of conventional art forms such as drawing, painting, making objects and single-channel videos? New technologies are not a tool of convenience nor an ornament for intellectual vanity. It constitutes our body and society with our organism and mentality. As technology grows, our body earns more types of vocal organs. Here I call the vocal organ that which makes our body hatch out of an obsolescent one and into a luminescent one as the cyborg. An artwork without a voice cannot “signify”. In other words, an artwork without mature incarnation does not radiate its communicative power. How do I incarnate the cyborg communication? How can I make my project fit enough to speak by itself? How does the body of my artwork signify? I will look for the answers through aggressive development of my projects but still leave room for hybridization and evolution by themselves in the process.
III. Bibliography (1) Haraway, Donna. “The promise of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others” Cultural Studies. New York; Routledge, 1992. (Pp.295-337)
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