Network gestures. Critical and creative responses to the networked body

Bodies are in a constant process of performance, transmission, and reception within online platforms. Mediation of the body occurs via online video platforms through the transmission of gestural performance, physical acts, audio, and music – and has been a topic of analysis in performance art studies under the theme of liveness (Auslander 1999).  The topic of the self online has been explored from multiple dimensions, including by artists and scholars – notably performance, media and post-internet artists and digital media theorists. The technological affordances of online platforms allow performance art and gestural communication to circulate widely as virally transmissible, popular and engaging cultural forms. Over the past decade, the mediated body has gained widespread attention via the widespread use of network-enabled smartphones and devices with increasingly wideband and affordable data rates, on social media video platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. As miniaturisation of high-quality lenses continues alongside the proliferation of inexpensive and always connected broadband devices, the mediated body equally accelerates its transmission and re-presentation through culture. This creative practice research project uses artistic outcomes to examine the tensions and overlap between performance art, gesture and online mediation within a social media-oriented contemporary culture. It seeks to ask the following research question: How does the mediated body allow for contemporary interpretations of gestural performance art?