"Memory makes our sense of self possible because it permits reflection, allows us to compare ourselves to past and possible future selves."

Stone, Alluquère Rosanne, "In the language of vampire speak: overhearing our own voices", in the eight technologies of otherness, author-editor Sue Goulding, (London: Routledge Press, 1997), 59.

We are interfaced with machines that are weaving themselves into our everyday lives until they are nearly invisible. Human/machine couplings such as neural implants, prosthetic devices, genetic engineering, organ transplants, biocomputers, artificial life programs and highly interactive virtual reality technologies are all leading to a restructuring of our concepts of the self. These technologies are peculiarly intimate, in that our own bodies are the materials on which they operate. Divisions between organic, natural and artificial, human and machine, and living and dead have become mutable.

It has become important for me to investigate the interstice where our lived experience and technologies merge. Being (having) a body is a major part of our identity and individuality. Being flesh is how we know who we are. Our receiving minds are not just empty shells; they contain information and a psychic structure developed from bodily experience. They are places where subjective, somatic experience is brought into account.

I have been developing a new piece that encompasses not only my history and identity but also my ongoing theoretical concerns. In this particular work, I am analyzing the tendency to reduce to the human body to an object-a digital archive. If we see the body only as information (genetic codes, downloadable details, etc.), then its erasure appears feasible. The body becomes interchangeable and ultimately disposable. In a standardized model of human consciousness where does life experience, memory and sentience belong?

By using video capture and manipulating its subsequent storage, I am investigating how sentience is constructed from living in an extended structure of time in relationship with memory and bodily experience, while reflecting upon the ways in which this very experience is being altered by new technologies.

A life-sized, double aluminum cutout surrogate of myself as a young girl moves through the gallery space on a robotic platform. Sandwiched between these two identical cutouts are a small video camera and a small video projector. Sandwiched between these two identical cutouts are a small video camera and a small video projector. As visitors enter the gallery space, the figure interacts with them by turning and moving toward them. At random intervals, their image and movement is video captured. These images are combined and overlaid with previously stored images and projected outward from its metal body through the small video projector. After several playbacks the computer either adds the new video to memory or discards it. When alone in the gallery space, the figure randomly retrieves images from its data bank, combines and overlays them, and projects them into the exhibition space. Carnevale 3.0 carries images from each of its venues to the next, building a database of lived experience in which the captured video images become memories of the original event.

As a mediator of experience, this fleshless entity has the ability to exhibit human behavior by generating responsive movements, processing information, and accessing memory. Recollection, physicality and sentience become mutable entities.