Presentation in Somatic Conference, Coventry University, England, 2012.

1. 4 Dreaming :
the digital double as strategy of analysis
of the body’s presence/absence in
contemporary interactive ambient

2. Doctor Mirella Misi
Independent artist and researcher. Founder of Slash Art Tech
Lab, Amsterdam. Partner of Electric Cyberdance Research
Group at LaPAC Laboratory, Brazil.
Professor Ludmila Pimentel
School of Dance at Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, Dean of
Electric Cyberdance Research Group at LaPAC
Laboratory, Brazil, Postdoctoral studies and Professor
Collaborator at xm: Lab, Hochschule der Bildenden Künste
Saar, Germany, with CAPES sponsorship, and Partner of Slash
Lab Amsterdam

3. Abstract
• Adopting as first reference the concept of 'digital
double' (DIXON, Steve. 2007), this article is a
strategy of analysis of the body’s relationship
between presence and absence in immersive
interactive ambient, having as artistic
artefact/example the interactive video installation
4 Dreaming. The installation invites the public to
the subjective universe of the art
work, configured as a hybrid environment, where
the audience can interact with its 'digital double'.

4. Professor Steve Dixon
President of the LASALLE College of the Arts (Singapore)
World-renowned academic, researcher and interdisciplinary artist, with an
international reputation for his research in the use of media and computing
technologies in the performing arts. Author of the book Digital Performance, 2007

5. 4 Dreaming
An Interactive video installation
by Slash Art Tech Lab Amsterdam

6. Introduction
The double is an archaic notion that has always
been present, throughout the history of
mankind, in magic rituals, religious
rituals, mystic practices, mythologies, popular
traditions, and in the collective imagination.

7. Witchcraft and Voodoo
Replica voodoo doll. (KLAUS AARSLEFF/FORTEAN PICTURE LIBRARY)
Witchcraft puppet. (FORTEAN PICTURE LIBRARY)

8. Mummification and Embalsement
Egyptian mummy, PTOLOMEIC ERA, III - II A.C.
(Louvre, Paris). In: <http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummie>

9. Ghost
In: <http://ghostradio.wordpress.com/tag/ghost-hunters/>
http://wdfyfe.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/8-simple-rules-for-ghosts/

10. The Digital Double
Dixon states that the 'digital double' "refers to
old notions of magic not only by virtue of the
'conjuring' of an alternate and second body for
the performing subject, but also in relation to
ancient laws of imitative and homeopathic
magic" [1] (pp. 244).

11. The Digital Double
In the various possibilities of digital
technology, the double creates the possibility of
"incarnation" of other identities, the circulation
through other realities or, being at the same
time in different places, experiencing the
inherent spatial ubiquity of our contemporary
stage.

12. • Artists working with digital technology have
explored a range of different possibilities for
space-time relations and translations of visual
and sensory experiences in the interaction
between performers, audience/participant and
virtual and real spaces.
• There is a common approach between them with
respect to the physical limits of the human body
and the surrounding physical space, a desire to
expand human consciousness and perception
beyond those boundaries.

13. Contemporary technologies offer updates to our
past and ancestors mythical and magical rituals
The representation of the body in these artistic
events is made through its ‘digital double’, which
reveal a matter made of information that
integrates the physical spaces as
inscriptions, subjected to constant mutations
and reconfigurations.

14. Some approaches to the concept of double in
theatre, psychology and philosophy.
• Artaud’s [3] spiritual and transcendental perspective of the double
of theatre
• Freud [4], the uncanny
• Lacan’s concept of 'mirror stage ' [5] , the fictional invention of ego
and identity,
• Derrida’s [6] notions of the double and of repetition, in which he
states a blurring of boundaries between imagination and
reality, between symbol and what it symbolizes.
• Heidegger [7] to propose the double as a fundamental condition of
human existence
• Nicholas Royle’s [8] analysis of the uncanny in psychology and in
philosophy
• Brecht’s notion of alienation-effect
• genetic engineering

15. “The double of theatre is its true and magical self, stirring other
dark and potent shadows which rail against a fossilized, shadow
less culture” (Antonin Artaud, 1938)
In: <http://www.shadowhousepits.com.au/releasing%20artaud.htm>

16. The concept of Uncanny (Freud)
First published in Imago, Bd. V., 1919; reprinted in Sammlung, Fünfte
Folge. [Translated by Alix Strachey.]
• “an uncanny effect is often and easily
produced by effacing the distinction between
imagination and reality, such as when
something that we have hitherto regarded as
imaginary appears before us in reality, or
when a symbol takes over the full functions
and significance of the thing it symbolizes, and
so on. (Freud, 1919, p.14)

17. The Uncanny (German, das Unheimliche—
literally, "un-home-ly", but
idiomatically, "scary", "creepy")
is a Freudian concept of an instance where
something can be familiar, yet foreign at the
same time, resulting in a feeling of it being
uncomfortably strange. Because the uncanny is
familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive
dissonance within the experiencing subject due
to the paradoxical nature of being attracted
to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time.

18. the digital double on the video installation slash
cam 2/Slash Lab, 2011

19. Mirror Stage (Lacan)
[…] The function of the mirror stage thus
turns out , in my view, to be a particular case
of the function of imagos , which is to establish
a relationship between an organism and its
reality – or , as they say, between the
Innenwelt and the Umwelt.”
Lacan, Jackes. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic
Experience. Deliyered on July 17, 1949, in Zurich at the Sixteenth International Congress of
Psychoanalysis (p. 78)

20. Dixon’s concept of 'digital double ' on
contemporary multimedia performances:
"the double as digital image replicating its
human referent has been used to produce a
range of different forms of imitation and
representation which reflect upon the changing
nature and understanding of the body and
self, spirit, technology, and theatre" [1] (pp.
244).

21. Dixon’s four categories
of double digital
• 1) the double as reflection;
• 2) the double as alter-ego;
• 3) the double as spiritual emanation; and
• 4) the double as manipulable mannequin.

22. The installation 4 Dreaming
• The installation 4Dreaming is part of the project Slash
cam3D, started in November 2011, an on-going project of
SLASH Art and Technology Research Lab, located in
Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
• Slash cam3D, in the classification of Robert Wechsler [9], is
an Environment Oriented Interactive Software created
especially for multimedia productions, which uses video
cameras as sensors to detect data about the position and
the movement of the performer in the physical space to
intervene in real time on audio and image files. In
combination, the software provides three-dimensional
virtual graphic (open GL) objects that can be triggered to
respond to the movement of the performer as three-
dimensional projections.

23. The virtual
environment of
4 Dreaming:
the projected image
shows the
audience/participant,
the video
footage, and the
synthetic graphic
objects, all in three
dimensions, composi
ng a unique
environment.

24. Dixon’s categories of digital double in
4 Dreaming
Using the categories of Dixon [1], 4 Dreaming
(4D) can be understood as a multimedia
performance representing the human referent
in the form of the 'digital double' threefold: as
reflection, as alter-ego and as spiritual
emanation.

25. The Double as alter-ego
"in performances where the double coexists
with the live performer but is not directly
watched and acknowledged by her, or where the
double undertakes asynchronous activity, or
presents another ‘side’ or visual embodiment of
a character, we move into the domain of the
digital double as an alter-ego"[Dixon, 2007].

26. The double as alter-ego
The public act as audience The public acts as performer

27. The double as reflection
The virtual environment transforms every
moment causing the participant to be constantly
aware of his/her position/situation/reaction. It
is in this cybernetic game that we displace our
presence/absence and exercise and experience
an offset bodily presence, and enable our digital
twins to constitute and show themselves
revealing us their reflexes and shapes.

28. The double as reflection

29. The double as spiritual emanation
Especially because the configuration of the work
is ethereal in its immateriality _ an artwork that
is not a physical object _ the public becomes an
immaterial object/subject, having an "out-of-
body" experience.

30. The double as spiritual emanation

31. Professor Johannes Birringer
Brunel University
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/excellence/performance/daplab
With the new
interactive digital
technologies the
concept of real-time
flow is transformed, as
well as the notion of
space, which becomes
environment/ambient.

32. Extensions of identity and self:
The possibility to
experience
duplication, multiplication
and transmutation with
our 'digital double' causes
us to reflect on our
contemporary human
condition, the changes in
our perceptual system and
subjectivity, and therefore
our reconfiguration
through digital
technologies.

33. Cybernetics Science of Norbert Wiener
• Information is a term that designates the
content of what we exchange with the outside
world as we adjust to it.
• The process of receiving and using information
is the process of our adjustment to the
environmental contingencies and our
adaptation to this environment, a cybernetic
process.

34. Liquid Views: a virtual mirror
of narcissus (1993) by Monika
Fleischmann, Christian A.
Bohn and Wolfgang Strauss
As well as in Liquid
Views, in 4 Dreaming
the body is duplicated
as a digital
companion, in its
double, kidnapped
from the real physical
space and
subsequently put into
a technological
ambient, presented
incredibly real to the
human brain.

35. Technologies transform our body/ydob
experiences and can be considered as
extensions of our own identity and self. Our
senses today relate with these digital immersive
environments which promote new perceptions
that are being assimilated by our original
biological mechanisms.

36. It is from the body that we began to experience
and is to the body that the experience returns.
In concordance with Rosane Stone [13] "even in
the era of techno social life domain live is lived
through bodies ".

37. The installation 4Dreaming: an
immersive and interactive installation,
Birringer considers the immersive environments
as a new field of knowledge and also a new
space for entertainment. Despite RV
environments have been explored since the
early 90’s, due to immense computational work
and equipment, still nowadays the creation of
this type of environment is not converted into a
common accessible language.

38. For Birringer, there are four types of ambient
that involve interactive performances:
• the Interactive Environments
• Derivatives Environments
• Network Environments
• Immersive Environments
and the Merged Environments, where the four
previous types can be merged into one
environment.

39. Conclusion
• To manifold our understanding of the concepts of body, virtuality and
reality, the projected image of the subject reveals at once its presence and
absence, a present absence, actualized, visible in its immateriality.
• Interested in the discussion of the concept of ‘digital double' we present
the double body of the installation 4Dreaming, which delineates the
immaterial but presents itself in the reality of the installation.
• As the world is ambiguously material and immaterial, visible and
invisible, more than we can conceive, this installation delights us with the
experience and visualization of our digital contemporary doubles, re-
signifying archaic mythical and mystical concepts via technologies of
immersive environments.
• The double digital existence premises as well the occurrence of a
transmutation that is realized and actualized in a state of
“betweeness”, and that postulates itself as such because of the very
nature of the hybrid space where it dwells/transits. It is in this liminal
space where the subject (as a double) meets the strangeness of belonging
to an unusual absence given through the self-recognition in another
opportunity of shape, in another reality.