Digital Embodiment and the Arts: Exploring Hybrid Spaces through Emerging Technologies Denise Doyle (University of Wolverhampton) 9781835951125

A timely examination of the use of emerging technologies in the arts in recent decades, from the first wave of Virtual Reality through to the current use of Mixed, Augmented and Extended Realities. It highlights the necessity of understanding technological experiences through the assumption that all experience is embodied. An explosion of digital culture and experience has most certainly given artists and creative practitioners new ways of exploring a hybridisation of creative practices with access to technological tools only previously dreamt of. Further, there are a number of threads around digital embodiment and its centrality to the digital experience.

The book is divided into 3: Section 1 explores the whole notion of embodied experience through a study of space and virtuality, imagination, and technology. Section 2 lays the ground for a more explicit understanding of the role the body has in our engagement with the digital technologies focussing on three distinct bodies: the gravitational body, the virtual body, and finally the hybrid body. Section 3 is split into three chronological chapters in terms of technological developments, that of VR, Virtual Worlds, and Augmented, Mixed, and Extended Realities.

While individual aspects and themes covered here can be found in some recent books, there is little that places digital embodiment within the arts in the way this book does. A unique synthesis.

With over 20 years of experience in arts and new technologies Dr Denise Doyle continues to research the impact of emerging technologies on practices across a diverse range of creative fields. As a practitioner and and a theorist her research interests focus on virtual worlds, embodied experience, virtual reality, phenomenology, digital narratives, and gravity, outer space and artistic practice. She is Principal Editor of the Journal of Virtual Creativity published by Intellect and Visiting Professor at Ontario College of Art and Design University, Canada.