the schizoid body
stahl@khm.uni-koeln.de
> comments on the virtual body
Virtual bodies are bodies as we
don't know them. My Virtual body is a mutating kind of object, it is a crash
body, a trash body, a sacrificial body that travels at Kroker's sub-suicidal
speed, evaporates and then recreates, readopts itself to whatever the unit me +
medium mutates into. Recombining myself, matching my virtual identity to my
virtual body, I become something outside of my total control. For what is "ME"
anyway? except an infinite number of social relations and mental connections?
The schizoid body is the future body of Cyberspace. Schizoid because it is
moody, a liquid expression of multiple ME's, ever-changing, at least compared to
a Cartesian model of reality. In the schizoid reality of cyberspace we can all
crossdress, be aliens, furry animals, strawberry cakes and other stuff, and most
mudders will know how fun that can be. Who hasn't pretended to be the opposite
gender in an on-line communication? In cyberspace your virtual representa tion
turns communication not only into a play with words, but also into a play with
identity, corporeality and sexuality. Inside these fantastical worlds the body
potentially becomes a fantastical, malleable, instable, fluctuating,
inconsequent kind of object. It is a multiple by nature, infinitely
reproducible, duplicable. Sure, your virtual representation is an object in a
virtual space, just like any virtual car, cake, UFO or stone, but the important
thing about your relation to your virtual representation is how you relate to
it, how you design yourselves to look and behave like. The body of the future, I
think, will adopt to the strong schizophrenic-like fabric of cyberspace, and to
the personal view of me as a multiple self.