Cyborgism and performance art: directing, designing and spectating connected technologized bodies.

Abstract

The purpose of the dissertation is to study and analyse the impact of the use of technology, especially of cyber systems, on the performative body in performance art. The study highlights the transformation of the biological organism into cyber-organism (cyborg), unveiling the influence caused by such alteration on performance art, directing, scenography and spectating. It attempts to penetrate into the artwork through the study of cyber-organic events as well as original interviews with pioneering artists in the field of cyborg performance and robotics. The aim of this effort is to explore, disclose and construe new ways of corporal narrative, and analyse the modern perception of aesthetics that portray the contemporary human and foreshadow the future performer. Given that art reflects social realities, we argue that, often, it heralds future worlds. Based on this assumption, we compare the cyborg environment of the performance to a social microcosm that tries to advance from something “old” and obsolete to something “new”. In the present thesis we consider the cyborg performance as an artform that challenges both the human body and automated systems. We view cyborg art as the human’s confrontation with her powers; a rite of passage, a transition from the “known” to the “unknown”.