Caseorganic at 12:58, 25 August 2026

2026-08-25T12:58:03Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:58, 25 August 2026
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	===Author===		===Author===
	Mark B. N. Hansen		Mark B. N. Hansen, American media theorist. At the time of writing he taught at Princeton University; he is now James B. Duke Professor of Literature at Duke University. His related works include ''New Philosophy for New Media'' (MIT Press, 2004) and ''Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media'' (2015).

	===~~Book Link~~===		===Publication Details===
	~~http~~://~~amzn~~.to/~~eiQNVG~~		''Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media''. New York: Routledge, 2006. ISBN 978-0-415-97015-0 (paperback), 978-0-415-97016-7 (hardback).<ref>[https://www.routledge.com/Bodies-in-Code-Interfaces-with-Digital-Media/Hansen/p/book/9780415970167 Bodies in Code], Routledge.</ref>

	===~~Product~~ Description===		===Description===
	~~Bodies~~ in ~~Code explores how our bodies experience and adapt to digital environments. Cyberculture theorists have tended to overlook biological reality when talking about~~ virtual reality, and ~~Mark B~~. N. ~~Hansen's book shows what they've been missing. Cyberspace~~ is ~~anchored in~~ the ~~body, he argues~~, and ~~it's~~ the body~~--not high-tech computer graphics--that allows a person to feel like they are really "moving" through~~ virtual ~~reality. Of course these virtual experiences are also profoundly affecting our very understanding~~ of ~~what~~ it ~~means to live as embodied beings~~.		Hansen's argument is a corrective aimed at a specific habit in 1990s cyberculture theory: the assumption that virtual reality is a place you go, and that going there means leaving the body behind. He argues the reverse. Virtuality is not a domain separate from the physical; it is a capacity of embodiment itself, and digital media work only because the body is already virtual — already capable of projecting, anticipating and inhabiting spaces it is not physically in.

	~~Hansen~~ draws ~~upon recent work in visual culture~~, ~~cognitive science~~, and new media ~~studies~~, as ~~well as examples~~ of ~~computer~~ graphics, ~~websites~~, and new ~~media art~~, to ~~show how our bodies are~~ in ~~some ways already becoming virtual~~.		The book draws on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the neurophenomenology of Francisco Varela, and the philosophy of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze, and it tests these against a corpus of new-media artworks rather than against commercial products. Works by Char Davies, Myron Krueger, Jeffrey Shaw and others serve as the evidence: installations in which the participant's own proprioception, balance and motor intention are the interface.

			===Key Ideas===
			* '''The primacy of the body schema.''' What lets a person feel they are "moving" in a virtual environment is not the fidelity of the graphics but the body's pre-reflective sense of its own posture and capacity for movement. Hansen calls this the "primordial" or "mixed reality" condition.
			* '''Mixed reality as the general case.''' Rather than treating physical and virtual as two realms with a boundary, Hansen treats all experience as mixed reality; VR is a limiting case, not a separate world.
			* '''Affectivity and proprioception over vision.''' The dominant strand of cyberculture theory was ocularcentric — cyberspace as a landscape to be looked at. Hansen shifts the account to the non-visual senses that actually do the work of orientation.
			* '''Technesis.''' Technology does not simply represent the body; it participates in constituting what the body can do, which means new interfaces literally expand the range of possible embodiment.

			===Criticism===
			Reviewers have found the theoretical apparatus dense and the choice of gallery installations over everyday devices limiting: the argument is made on works designed precisely to foreground embodiment, which is a friendly test. Whether the same account explains the phone in a pocket or the mouse on a desk is left largely to the reader.

			===Relevance to Cyborg Anthropology===
			''Bodies in Code'' is the strongest available rebuttal to the disembodiment thesis that ran through early writing on cyberspace, and it supplies the theoretical basis for design arguments that would later become mainstream — that interfaces should recruit the body's existing competences rather than demand new abstract ones. It pairs directly with N. Katherine Hayles's insistence that information never was bodiless.

			===Related Reading===
			* [[How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics]]
			* [[Immersive technology]]
			* [[The Pleasure of the Interface]]
			* [[Simulation and Augmentation: Issues of Wearable Computers]]

			===References===
			<references/>

	[[Category:Books]]		[[Category:Books]]
	[[Category:~~Communication Studies~~]]		[[Category:Digital Anthropology]]
	[[Category:Cyberspace]]		[[Category:Cyberspace]]
	[[Category:~~Cyborg Studies]]~~		[[Category:Critical Theory]]
	~~[[Category:Consumption]]~~
	~~[[Category:Information Society~~]]

Caseorganic at 18:46, 27 January 2011

2011-01-27T18:46:31Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:46, 27 January 2011
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			===Author===
			Mark B. N. Hansen

			===Book Link===
			http://amzn.to/eiQNVG

			===Product Description===
			Bodies in Code explores how our bodies experience and adapt to digital environments. Cyberculture theorists have tended to overlook biological reality when talking about virtual reality, and Mark B. N. Hansen's book shows what they've been missing. Cyberspace is anchored in the body, he argues, and it's the body--not high-tech computer graphics--that allows a person to feel like they are really "moving" through virtual reality. Of course these virtual experiences are also profoundly affecting our very understanding of what it means to live as embodied beings.

			Hansen draws upon recent work in visual culture, cognitive science, and new media studies, as well as examples of computer graphics, websites, and new media art, to show how our bodies are in some ways already becoming virtual.

	[[Category:Books]]		[[Category:Books]]
	[[Category:Communication Studies]]		[[Category:Communication Studies]]

Caseorganic: Created page with 'Category:Books Category:Communication Studies Category:Cyberspace Category:Cyborg Studies Category:Consumption Category:Information Society'

2010-05-11T06:30:17Z

Created page with 'Category:Books Category:Communication Studies Category:Cyberspace Category:Cyborg Studies Category:Consumption Category:Information Society'

New page

[[Category:Books]]
[[Category:Communication Studies]]
[[Category:Cyberspace]]
[[Category:Cyborg Studies]]
[[Category:Consumption]]
[[Category:Information Society]]

Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media - Revision history

Caseorganic at 12:58, 25 August 2026

Caseorganic at 18:46, 27 January 2011

Caseorganic: Created page with 'Category:Books Category:Communication Studies Category:Cyberspace Category:Cyborg Studies Category:Consumption Category:Information Society'