As we shift toward a state of immateriality, technology increasingly eliminates all traces of our material reality. Using the model of the Network as a platform for interaction, Tina La Porta is interested in exploring the separation of the corporeal world implied by the use of telecommunications technology. The restrictions of our chosen technologies in many ways function as a collapsed environment for our simulated contact. Thus La Porta focuses in on connection and disconnection, fluctuations in transmission and reception between geographically separated participants mediated by the surface of the screen, and represents the disembodied and dislocated nature of on-line communication through a re-combination of images and sounds as a continued exploration of presence, absence and the desire for connectivity within a global networked environment.

In this presentation, La Porta will explore both the potentialities and the meaning(s) of embodiment within an environment built around and within communications technologies, with special regard to the relationship between technology, the body, and female subjectivity within a net-worked environment, and the alienation experienced when the human point of view comes into direct contact with the computer screen, interface and code. The result is a displaced embodiment that resonates within the symbolic realm of cyberspace. The corporeal body disappears and is replaced by an immaterial outline of passing presence. The code, ultimately, refers to the body's DNA structure: what becomes visible to the eye is that which is generally hidden.

About Tina La Porta

Tina La Porta is a media artist who lives and works in New York City. Her most recent work has been created specifically for the internet, as a continued exploration of female subjectivity within a globally networked environment. La Porta is the recipient of a commission from Turbulence.org with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and has been chosen as a Semi-Finalist in the Arts and Culture category of the Fourth Annual Global Information Infrastructure (GII) Awards. She has exhibited and lectured on her work internationally including at the Montreal International Festival of New Cinema and New Media, Boston Photographic Resource Center, Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul in Brazil, Ecole Superieure Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris (including her net.works + avatars), and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.