What is the status of body in the realm of digital media? This volume studies how our perception of body has been modified by new media (videogames, transmedia platforms, ARGs), new narratives (science-fictions, TV series) and new devices (wearable technologies, Virtual Reality, cosmetic surgery). Which body images and identities do emerge? Within the ‘Post-Cinematic’ or ‘Post-Media’ condition, the body becomes a changeable, flexible ‘unstable object’. The first part of this book analyses the presence of body in television/film productions and in social media (changes, aesthetics, new spaces); the second part focuses on the relationship between the digital media and the viewer/user, showing how his/her body is subject to shape modification.
Alberto Brodesco is Research Assistant at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento. He is author of Una voce nel disastro. L’immagine dello scienziato nel cinema dell’emergenza (2008) and Sguardo, corpo, violenza. Sade e il cinema (2014). He has published extensively about the limits of representation (violence, death, pornography, freaks) and the technoscientific imagery on audiovisual media (cinema, television, YouTube).
Federico Giordano is Researcher at the Università Telematica San Raffaele (Rome) and Visiting Professor at the University for Foreigners (Perugia). His main research interests include Italian contemporary cinema, landscape in the media and game studies. Among his latest publications: The Archives. Post-Cinema and Video Games Between Memory and the Image of the Present, ed. with B. Perron (2014), L’immagine videoludica. Gamification, cinema e videogioco, ed. with A. Catolfi (2015).
CONTENTS
Introduction
The Border Within
The Human Body in Contemporary Media
Alberto Brodesco, Federico Giordano
PART 1 – DIGITAL BODIES: FICTIONS, ARTS, DAILY LIVES
FORMS OF CYBORGISM IN GABRIELE SALVATORES’ NIRVANA
Paolo Russo
LA PERFORMANCE NUMÉRIQUE ENTRE CORPS ET ULTRACORPS
Christian Uva
BODY DOUBLES
Scientific imagery and typologies of body multiplication
in contemporary television series
Alberto Brodesco
PRENATAL PORTRAITS
Ultrasound imagery in expectant mothers’
autobiographical narrative
Deborah Toschi
TAHIR SQUARE
A Space Extended to the People Watching it
Ludovica Fales
HYBRIDITY, EMPATHY AND THE ‘TOTAL ARTWORK’
IN METAMORPHOSIS: TITIAN
Susan Broadhurst
PART 2 – DIGITAL MEDIA AND VIEWER’S BODIES
TRANSMEDIA AND ‘TECHNIQUES OF THE BODY’
Marta Boni
HAPTIC CINEMA
Smartphones and the Spectator’s Body
Kata Szita
‘TOUCH ME, HIT ME, KILL ME!’
Wearable, Haptic and Multisensorial Devices
as Tools for a New Bodily Spectatorship
Federico Giordano
MOBILE/LOCATIVE PARADIGM
Embodiment and Storytelling in Digital Media
Giulio Lughi
LIFE IS REAL = REALITY IS A PLATFORM
Creating Engineered Experiences
where fiction and reality merge
Ariana Dongus
NEW IDENTITIES?
Cosmetic Surgery and Bodily Identity
Juan Antonio Gómez Heredia
BODY IMAGES
People-machine configurations in the context of digital media Christina Schachtner
CONTRIBUTORS