The Dis-Embodied Re-Embodied Body

The two opposing ideas about the body that seem to emerge in discussions about the interface, that Jeffrey Shaw speaks about in his article, are that “the sensual body constitutes our very being and the mortal body is what sentences us to non-being.” Basically his opposing ideas are your own self vs. your mortal self. Are you still ‘you’ when you are in the virtual world. I think the only chance for an interface to be seen as an opportunity to reinforce the message of a certain piece of work is by making sure the interface is creating something to the best of your ability to allow your message to be the main focus. The interface cannot take over the meaning of it all. The idea of our installation is to allow those who are visually impaired the chance to play our air hockey game. This is our purpose, if our interface is so complicated or too hard to understand; such as what sound goes with what, or it begins to be taken as a musical game of air hockey that you control with your game play; we lose our message. Our message is that we want this game to be interactive for the visually impaired; not to say it is strictly for them, but this is our main focus. While the player or participant is virtually controlling the sounds being made, they are still playing as themselves. Physically they are standing in front of the table and physically moving their “goalies” and striking the puck. So looking at Shaw’s two opposing ideas about the body, we are focused on an “actual” self.