Machine Or The Body?

When thinking about how N.Katherine Hayles discusses art and the artist in new media in her book, Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary, I immediately think of Chapter 3, The Body and The Machine. Media is programmed to transform the way citizens do business across other countries, how they communicate with technology, and most importantly according to Hayles, is how they construct themselves as contemporary subjects.

Being subject to a machine or machine to the body, remains a struggle when comparing dominance in society. Hayles determines that both the body and machine work through strategic gestures to compromise indifferences. In particular, electronic literature, allows continuities to bind both together. Technology increases feedback from the media, and positions literature as contemporary. This enables eliterature to become art in new media.

Not only is e-literature composed for the purpose of art/storytelling, but also for the effects of the composer and viewers. After skipping through a page or two, Hayles begins another intertwining argument relating how and why change in media is needed. New criticism rises on the accounts of work to be exciting only when partially or fully interacting with technology. In this sense, body is constructing to the machine. But, it could be the other way around also.

Media technologies has been rapidly changing since the American Civil War. Hayles states contemporary de-differentiation depends on digital media's ability to represent everything that art has to offer: text, sounds, images, video. So these modifications follow art, in relation to the body. These developments and technologies set the stage for emerging art in new media and the leadway to international communication.