BodyDaemonArtist StatementBodyDaemon is based on a simple but often obscured idea: current views of culture are heavily influenced by technology, to the point where technological and computational paradigms are the prism through which we all seem to view and understand ourselves. Is there any view of culture apart from this techno-centric view? The body currently occupies a difficult place in this problem. Effaced and deprived of any formal place in the world of traditional computer science and engineering research while simultaneously being engaged and made acquiescent in the world of biotechnology research. Is there another way? Can a system be created that might shift our perspectives in these matters? Is it not reasonable to expect that our technologies be shaped (or at least be informed) by our physiology, physical experiences and conciousness, rather than the other way around? BodyDaemon attempts such an endeavor by engaging the body with the world of computer networks and protocols, where the body itself is a protocological agent and the computer (in this case a server) is informed and influenced by it. With BodyDaemon the body is represented as information patterns, and the computer is influenced by the biological/physiological processes that generate the patterns. Today more than ever, the collision of information processing technology with traditional notions relating to the body, and to life itself, cry out for a reexamination of the role of each in society. And perhaps one way to get started is to create a balanced cultural understanding of the evolving relationships between our increasingly complex and intelligent informaton processing machines and the much more complex and intelligent information processing properties of the human body. While BodyDaemon is certanly concerned with the relationships between humans and technology, it is not concerned with notions of some hybridized machine-body cyborg or of the sci-fi fantasies of "uploading the consciousness" into the disembodied world of cyberspace. Rather it is a modest step in the direction of discovering that the body must occupy a more prominent role and can be embodied in our information-processing machines and their computational processes. |