{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","uuid":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","normalized_title":"mediaandnewcapitalisminthedigitalagethespiritofnetworks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","isbns":["9781349379743","9780230106062"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":258,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Media%20and%20New%20Capitalism%20in%20the%20Digital%20Age%20The%20Spirit%20of%20Networks","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/search"},"page":{"printed_page":148,"pdf_page":150,"physical_index":150,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"4ba49562350192dd1c234a0bc513c0c8b14833b4a8185461197b88c44e62d61c"},"chapter":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","content":"D’Urbano’s artwork renders the human body a suit, which in turn renders the human body. The model therefore covers her naked body with cloths that uncover her naked body. In other words, the artwork does a work of uncovering by covering, a work of reflexivity, a “movement whereby that which has been used to generate a system is made, through a changed perspective, to become part of the system it generates” (Hayles 1999, 8). In that movement, the rug under the very distinction between covering and uncovering is pulled. As the suit covers the naked body only to reveal the naked body, this artwork also undercuts the distinction between internal and external. As the text complementing the artwork observes, this work “blur[s] the line between inner and outer” (Moreno 2002). The suit, designed as an external membrane, a “second skin” that covers the first one, offsets its purpose and reveals the internal, first skin.\n\nThe artwork undermines another set of distinctions cherished in the humanist discourse of modernity. The body on the suit may look real and natural, but it is really a simulated, produced body. The body, the locus and marker of the human subject, has in this artwork become an object, but a quasi-object at that. However simulated, mediated, and pixelated the body is, it still retains a quasi-subjective quality (we can still claim to have seen her naked!). The subject (or a part thereof) can be objectified, while retaining its subjective qualities.\n\nFurthermore, to make the movement between subject and object, between the real and the simulated—between humans and technology— the body should be conceived as comprised of, or reducible and translatable to, signs, or information. It is this understanding of the human body and humans in general, as an informational entity that is, as we will see below, key to bridging the gap between information technology and humans and making their conflation plausible.\n\nIf the symbolic reproduction of the artist’s body as a suit is cautiously titled by Wired “Second Skin” (Moreno 2002)—presumably to distinguish this simulated skin from the first, real skin—another artwork featured in the magazine goes further in questioning the distinction between the real and the simulated, the natural and the manufactured, the human body and technology. The artwork is featured in another regular section in Wired, entitled “Found: Artifacts from the Future.” As the title suggests, “Found” features commissioned artworks that directly engage with a recurring theme of the magazine: technological utopianism (and, rarely, technological dystopianism). The artifacts and their artistic rendering are usually playful and amusing; they represent a fantasy. But a fantasy of what? And what can these fantasies tell us about the ontology of the network human according to the digital discourse? The artwork featured in the June 2002 edition of “Found” is particularity illuminating in the context of the perception of the network human (Bodow 2002).\n\n148\n\nMedia and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","previous_page":147,"next_page":149}