“Bodyworks:” An Adventure In Applied Technology

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The course that inaugurated the revolutionary videoconferencing system developed by information-technology specialists at the University at Buffalo is itself an adventure in applied information technology.

"Bodyworks: Medicine, Technology, and the Body in the late 20th Century," an interdisciplinary graduate seminar being taught simultaneously at Stanford University and UB, analyzes how new technologies affect and alter cultural perceptions of the human body.

The seminar was developed and is co-taught by linguist and semiotician Bernadette Wegenstein and Tim Lenoir, a historian of the philosophy of science. Both are members of the Stanford faculty. Wegenstein is a visiting professor of Romance languages and cultures in the UB Department of Comparative Literature this semester, where she is researching a project, "New Bodies -- New Worlds: Corporeal Narratives at the Turn of the Millennium."

The course, which examines a variety of just such narratives, is astonishing for the breadth and depth of its content and for the efficacy of its Web use.

Very-well designed from both an aesthetic and organizational standpoint, the Web site snaps with color and visual excitement. It is its lucid organization, however, that guides the "Bodyworks" pilgrim through a dozen or so tangled woods in which lurk conceptions of the physical self that most of us have never met. It is the clarity of the site map that makes it possible to quickly grasp the context in which discussion will take place on any given day.

And there are many contexts: bodies and machines; postmodern bodies; bodies, inscriptions and "replicants;" body sculpting; "The Matrix;" designer babies; transgendered selves; the body as revealed in cyberpunk film, and the body at the edge of postmodernity and as conceived of in various fields -- psychoanalysis, phenomenology, cognitive science, postmodern fiction and "visceral" cinema.

During a recent class, a Stanford student analyzed the link between the body's relationship to "reality" in the Buddhist tradition and in the 1999 futurist film "The Matrix." Noting the similarities in the way both paradigms gradually assimilate an understanding of their physical selves, she punctuated her observations with film clips demonstrating one principle after another. Everything presented live to her peers at Stanford was heard and seen clearly at the same time by her peers at UB, a fact that facilitated discussion between students at both sites.

The course Web site, shared by UB and Stanford, links to virtually all of the materials a student will need to prepare for a class discussion.

To prepare for a future class' "Cyberpunk Film" topic, for instance, the wise student will go straight to the Web site http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/BodyWorks/buffaloindex.html to download the day's required readings -- "Reality is Bleeding: A Brief History of Film from the 16th Century" and Don Ihde's "Bodies, Virtual Bodies and Technology."

The site links to various MPEG-1, real video and CD sources so students can view dozens of illustrative film clips pertinent to the day's topic from his or her desktop. In this case, the clips have been selected by the instructors from several sources, including the films "Johnny Mnemonic," "Lawnmower Man" and "Strange Days."

Additional readings on the topic also are available in full-text format, along with the suggestion that students rent "The Fly" or Shinya Tsukamoto's 1992 number, "Strange Tetsuo II: Body Hammer."

The course offers a peek at some of the alternative "bodies" the average Joe soon can expect to see and perhaps experience -- if he hasn't already -- as our physical selves continue to be reiterated through new technologies. It provides a "deep peek" at new ways to look at that nervous system, that hangnail and that guy with six legs and wings who sits next to you in "Fluids 430."

"Bodyworks" encourages one form of "knowing" to scurry and keep up with the possibilities spawned by another.

Check out the Web site: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/BodyWorks/buffaloindex.html. Get a look at how the body reacts when considered through the lens of an offbeat film or Internet connections, performance art, medicine, science or IP technology. It is encouraging to note that broken, dismembered and decayed, we come back bottle green and buzzing.