Vicky ParryClare Nattress is a conceptual artist whose work investigates discourses of the body, action, time and existence. The artist is currently exploring the concept of the body as a rich source of data-mining material through online environments and social media platforms.
In her new work and research, the artist has created a web based interface. www diaryofabody.co.uk. The site enables the users to follow ‘The Body’s’ GPS location and view hourly commentary that ‘The Body’ ‘tweets’ alongside the existence of that body in seconds, which began at birth. Here the experiences of the body will be archived upon this platform and can be revisited after the performance dates. The durational performance will begin on the 11th of September and run until the 16th of September 2012.
This project is designed for broadband connections. Shared maps are static and must be refreshed in order to update location, either click on the counting digits or the refresh button in your web browser. The website is functional on all Internet enabled devices and all Internet capable phones, IPad’s, laptops and computers. The data can be re-accessed by clicking on ‘access’ to the left.
“I am doing this to experiment with the operation of the body and extend my experiences within the mediated realm of social and online media and interfaces”. What I find interesting is this notion of interrogating the status of the body and the self in a technological age. I have recognized an idea that is not anymore about the progressive and optimized body, but has become more about a coded, net based and communicative body. Reiterating the idea that “technology has become the body’s new membrane of existence.” (Stiles:1996)
In this case, what does increasing technologies hooked up to the body might mean? The work interrogates what happens to the work when the artist stops shaping the technology and the technology starts shaping the work? but also, while many artists use digital technology, how many really confront the question of what it means to think, see, and filter affect through the digital?
All in all the research will develop through the performance but I will intend to accomodate why this method of meticulous self-documentation is different on social media and the online interfaces that the artist is broadcasting through?
Here the artists has strategically instigated a entirely new way of thinking about the idea that the life of the artist and the process of living is, in itself, a form of art. Although much of the material is mundane, as one might expect, it has a cumulative effect not least because of the artist’s total commitment to own self-historicisation. Data becomes information and is thus transformed from bare fact into narrative.
Check out the online performance from 11th September – 16th September.
