Papers by Naomi P Bennett
International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media , Jun 4, 2024
This co-authored paper is a reflection on our collective and individual experiences creating and ... more This co-authored paper is a reflection on our collective and individual experiences creating and performing in dist[Sense], a virtual performance experience for one audience-participant and one performer-participant to be present together in a single Zoom box. dist[Sense] was created as a reaction to global stay-at-home orders and a widely shared sense of isolation and need for human connection during the summer of 2020. Using Zoom Telematics, dist[Sense] created a shared virtual space in which the performer-participant and audience-participant could be copresent. Through writing this performance reflection, we (the creative team) have wrestled with our own definitions of presence. What does it mean to be both materially alone and virtually together? Can we really achieve shared meaning with another? Or is the experience of mutual understanding a projection of our thoughts and desires? Although these questions exist in Face-to-Face interactions, the virtual shared space of dist[Sense] brought their urgency to the forefront. In dist[Sense], the medium became the message: the medium of Zoom became the meaning we learned about-how to connect in virtual space. Through the creation and performance of dist[Sense], we each found our own way to be present and find connection in a time of mass isolation.
Partake: The Journal of Performance as Research, 2019
I stand floating in space, my eyes seeing only a vast expanse in the nothingness in which my body... more I stand floating in space, my eyes seeing only a vast expanse in the nothingness in which my body is suspended. Even as I feel my feet firmly planted on solid ground, a rush of strobing lights encompasses my field of vision, creating a sense of being un-stuck, a loss of physical placement that feels perfectly clear, perfectly safe, as if being held tightly by nothing at all. In January 2018, I stepped through the entrance into James Turrell’s Perfectly Clear, an immersive art installation at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA. Using personal narrative and scholarly accounts, this article examines experiences disembodiment and touch within Turrell’s Perfectly Clear. Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theories of the embodied subject as an active co-creator of their situated reality, Brian Massumi’s writings on visual perception and the co-functioning of the senses, and James Elkins’ theory of sight as a transactional act of metamorphosis, I examine Perfectly C...
Global Performance Studies, 2020
International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media
ABSTRACT In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and current era of social distancing, video confere... more ABSTRACT In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and current era of social distancing, video conferencing platforms have taken on a new importance as virtual gathering spaces in lieu of face-to-face interactions. Online interactivity has expanded the ways in which individuals experience connection, intimacy, and touch. Although digital media has traditionally been thought of as disembodied, I argue that it has the ability to elicit intense feelings of embodied touch. This essay will address the embodied nature of digital spaces and the urgent need for both physical distance and virtual closeness. Using Laura Marks's theory of haptic visuality, in which vision takes on a tactile quality, and the concept of virtual touch, a term I developed during my doctoral research in which an affective sensory response of touch is elicited through non-tactile senses, I analyze two performance works that I developed in the HopKins Black Box Performance Laboratory at Louisiana State University: Being Present (2016). Directed by Naomi Bennett, Performances by Jason Jedrusiak and Gabi Vigueira, HopKins Black Box, Louisiana State University. https://vimeo.com/450654368, and (dis)embodied in space: an interactive art installation (2019). Created by Naomi Bennett, Sound Design by Hal Lambert, Performances by Kalli Champagne, Emily Graves, Ethan Hunter, Greg Langner, Josiah Pearsall, and Montana Jean Smith, HopKins Black Box, Louisiana State University. https://vimeo.com/330611615. Using telepresence, which allows individuals to interact remotely in real-time using digital technology, or telematics, these two performances explore new possibilities for virtual intimacy, connection, and touch.
This article describes the execution and reflections of a Theatre of the Oppressed workshop offer... more This article describes the execution and reflections of a Theatre of the Oppressed workshop offered in 2017 to middle and high school groups visiting the Louisiana Old State Capitol Museum on half-day field trips. The workshops accompanied The Power of Children: Making a Difference exhibit, which features the stories and struggles of Ruby Bridges, Ryan White, and Anne Frank. Despite initial plans for an hour-long session, the workshop designed to respond to the stories of children in the exhibit and to examine the notion of “power” was cut to fifteen minutes. Our group of four facilitators discusses ways we modified Augusto Boal’s Image Theatre practices, the difficulties we faced leading short sessions in the setting of a school field trip, and our worries about maintaining emotional safety as youth tackled themes of power, powerlessness, and policing
International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 2020
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and current era of social distancing, video conferencing pla... more In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and current era of social distancing, video conferencing platforms have taken on a new importance as virtual gathering spaces in lieu of face-to-face interactions. Online interactivity has expanded the ways in which individuals experience connection, intimacy, and touch. Although digital media has traditionally been thought of as disembodied, I argue that it has the ability to elicit intense feelings of embodied
touch. This essay will address the embodied nature of digital spaces and the urgent need for both physical distance and virtual closeness. Using Laura Marks’s theory of haptic visuality, in which vision takes on a tactile quality, and the concept of virtual touch, a term I developed during my doctoral research in which an
affective sensory response of touch is elicited through non-tactile senses, I analyze two performance works that I developed in the HopKins Black Box Performance Laboratory at Louisiana State University: Being Present (2016). Directed by Naomi Bennett, Performances by Jason Jedrusiak and Gabi Vigueira, HopKins Black Box, Louisiana State University. https://vimeo.com/450654368, and (dis)embodied in space: an interactive art installation (2019). Created by Naomi Bennett, Sound Design by Hal Lambert, Performances by Kalli Champagne, Emily Graves,
Ethan Hunter, Greg Langner, Josiah Pearsall, and Montana Jean Smith, HopKins Black Box, Louisiana State University. https://vimeo.com/330611615. Using telepresence, which allows individuals to interact remotely in real-time using digital technology, or telematics, these two performances explore new possibilities for virtual intimacy, connection, and touch.
Global Performance Studies, 2020
An interactive video installation presented at the HopKins Black Box performance laboratory in Ja... more An interactive video installation presented at the HopKins Black Box performance laboratory in January 2019, aisthēsis draws on the Japanese concept of ma, or the potential existing in the space between, and the embodied dance practice of Contact Improvisation to question non-tactile experiences intimacy, connection, and touch. By engaging the audienceparticipants in acts of disembodied physical connection through live-feed video projections, aisthēsis investigates the ways in which intimacy, connection, and touch are complicated when the body is not physical present. Through telematics, which uses digital technology to connect individuals in two separate locations so that they appear to be physically present in the same space, aisthēsis invited audience-participants to interact through overlapping projected images of their technologically mediated selves. Physically located about fifteen feet apart on either side of a large center screen, each audience-participant stood alone in their own space in front of a live-feed webcam. The images of each individual were then projected together, connecting them on the center screen. This configuration allowed each individual to see both the physical body of their partner along with their telematically projected selves, creating a sense of disembodied-embodiment as they interacted in the center space. Through this digitally mediated connection, audience-participants were able to perform acts of touch in real-time, creating what Mark Hansen describes as vision enabling an extension of touch "beyond the boundaries of the skin" 1. Through the co-functioning nature of the senses of sight and touch, aisthēsis employs what Laura Marks describes as "haptic visuality," in which "the eyes themselves function like organs of touch" 2. According to the OED Online, touch is defined as the "contact with, and related senses [emphasis added] in which physical contact is the dominant idea," and is not restricted to its usually association with tactile, skin-on-skin contact, but works in conjunction with the other bodily sense. Through this co-functioning nature of the senses of sight and touch, aisthēsis invites an alternate sensory experience of what I define as virtual touch, an embodied experience that transcends the presence of physical contact. This article describes and analyzes the co-functioning nature of the visual and tactile senses in aisthēsis, creating an affective experience of virtual touch. In addition to descriptive analysis, I incorporate audience-participant feedback, photographs, and short videos to further examine the ways in which aisthēsis engaged the audience-participants' visual and tactile senses. The use of live-feed video and telematics allowed the audience-participants to explore virtual touch through visual-physical connections, creating tactile sensations elicited through the sense of sight. In this way, aisthēsis invited participants to see through their skin and feel through their eyes, blurring the sensory boundaries of touch and sight.
PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research, 2019
I stand floating in space, my eyes seeing only a vast expanse in the nothingness in which my body... more I stand floating in space, my eyes seeing only a vast expanse in the nothingness in which my body is suspended. Even as I feel my feet firmly planted on solid ground, a rush of strobing lights encompasses my field of vision, creating a sense of being un-stuck, a loss of physical placement that feels perfectly clear, perfectly safe, as if being held tightly by nothing at all.
In January 2018, I stepped through the entrance into James Turrell’s Perfectly Clear, an immersive art installation at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA. Using personal narrative and scholarly accounts, this article examines experiences disembodiment and touch within Turrell’s Perfectly Clear. Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theories of the embodied subject as an active co-creator of their situated reality, Brian Massumi’s writings on visual perception and the co-functioning of the senses, and James Elkins’ theory of sight as a transactional act of metamorphosis, I examine Perfectly Clear as a form of what I describe as disembodiment-embodiment, allowing the audience-participant to experience a sense of intimate embrace that challenges commonly held preconceptions of touch, sight, and the feeling of ones’ physical body in space.
Thesis Chapters by Naomi P Bennett
In this dissertation, I explore a phenomenon I call virtual touch, in which embodied sensations o... more In this dissertation, I explore a phenomenon I call virtual touch, in which embodied sensations of touch are felt through non-tactile senses. In the digital age, online interactivity has expanded the ways in which individuals experience connection, intimacy, and touch. Digital media, which have traditionally been thought of as disembodied, nevertheless have the ability to elicit intense feelings of touch. Through analysis of digital and virtual installation art, I examine the ways that non-tactile touch remains rooted in the embodied experience. The works I include in this study create a feeling of virtual touch through a co-functioning of the senses, and through what Brian Massumi terms “the superiority of the analog,” in which all experience is inherently rooted in the body.
Grounded in Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the embodied subject, I focus on three broad categories of installation art, each of which creates an affective response of virtual touch through senses of sight and proprioception: telematic performance using video-conferencing technology, digitally reactive animations, and immersive sculptures of light designed to decenter the perceptual and visual senses. Along with works by artists Paul Sermon, Adrien M & Claire B, teamLab, and James Turrell, I include analyses of two research performances I created, Being Present (2016) and (dis)embodied in space (2019), both of which entangled live and mediatized bodies through telematic video technology. Each of the artworks that I include place an emphasis on the embodied experience, engaging bodies in interactions of virtual touch with other bodies, with digitally reactive artworks, and with light and space. Throughout this dissertation, I argue for a rethinking of concepts of touch, intimacy, and connection in the digital age.
Book Reviews by Naomi P Bennett
Text and Performance Quarterly, 2020
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Papers by Naomi P Bennett
touch. This essay will address the embodied nature of digital spaces and the urgent need for both physical distance and virtual closeness. Using Laura Marks’s theory of haptic visuality, in which vision takes on a tactile quality, and the concept of virtual touch, a term I developed during my doctoral research in which an
affective sensory response of touch is elicited through non-tactile senses, I analyze two performance works that I developed in the HopKins Black Box Performance Laboratory at Louisiana State University: Being Present (2016). Directed by Naomi Bennett, Performances by Jason Jedrusiak and Gabi Vigueira, HopKins Black Box, Louisiana State University. https://vimeo.com/450654368, and (dis)embodied in space: an interactive art installation (2019). Created by Naomi Bennett, Sound Design by Hal Lambert, Performances by Kalli Champagne, Emily Graves,
Ethan Hunter, Greg Langner, Josiah Pearsall, and Montana Jean Smith, HopKins Black Box, Louisiana State University. https://vimeo.com/330611615. Using telepresence, which allows individuals to interact remotely in real-time using digital technology, or telematics, these two performances explore new possibilities for virtual intimacy, connection, and touch.
In January 2018, I stepped through the entrance into James Turrell’s Perfectly Clear, an immersive art installation at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA. Using personal narrative and scholarly accounts, this article examines experiences disembodiment and touch within Turrell’s Perfectly Clear. Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theories of the embodied subject as an active co-creator of their situated reality, Brian Massumi’s writings on visual perception and the co-functioning of the senses, and James Elkins’ theory of sight as a transactional act of metamorphosis, I examine Perfectly Clear as a form of what I describe as disembodiment-embodiment, allowing the audience-participant to experience a sense of intimate embrace that challenges commonly held preconceptions of touch, sight, and the feeling of ones’ physical body in space.
Thesis Chapters by Naomi P Bennett
Grounded in Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the embodied subject, I focus on three broad categories of installation art, each of which creates an affective response of virtual touch through senses of sight and proprioception: telematic performance using video-conferencing technology, digitally reactive animations, and immersive sculptures of light designed to decenter the perceptual and visual senses. Along with works by artists Paul Sermon, Adrien M & Claire B, teamLab, and James Turrell, I include analyses of two research performances I created, Being Present (2016) and (dis)embodied in space (2019), both of which entangled live and mediatized bodies through telematic video technology. Each of the artworks that I include place an emphasis on the embodied experience, engaging bodies in interactions of virtual touch with other bodies, with digitally reactive artworks, and with light and space. Throughout this dissertation, I argue for a rethinking of concepts of touch, intimacy, and connection in the digital age.
Book Reviews by Naomi P Bennett
touch. This essay will address the embodied nature of digital spaces and the urgent need for both physical distance and virtual closeness. Using Laura Marks’s theory of haptic visuality, in which vision takes on a tactile quality, and the concept of virtual touch, a term I developed during my doctoral research in which an
affective sensory response of touch is elicited through non-tactile senses, I analyze two performance works that I developed in the HopKins Black Box Performance Laboratory at Louisiana State University: Being Present (2016). Directed by Naomi Bennett, Performances by Jason Jedrusiak and Gabi Vigueira, HopKins Black Box, Louisiana State University. https://vimeo.com/450654368, and (dis)embodied in space: an interactive art installation (2019). Created by Naomi Bennett, Sound Design by Hal Lambert, Performances by Kalli Champagne, Emily Graves,
Ethan Hunter, Greg Langner, Josiah Pearsall, and Montana Jean Smith, HopKins Black Box, Louisiana State University. https://vimeo.com/330611615. Using telepresence, which allows individuals to interact remotely in real-time using digital technology, or telematics, these two performances explore new possibilities for virtual intimacy, connection, and touch.
In January 2018, I stepped through the entrance into James Turrell’s Perfectly Clear, an immersive art installation at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA. Using personal narrative and scholarly accounts, this article examines experiences disembodiment and touch within Turrell’s Perfectly Clear. Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theories of the embodied subject as an active co-creator of their situated reality, Brian Massumi’s writings on visual perception and the co-functioning of the senses, and James Elkins’ theory of sight as a transactional act of metamorphosis, I examine Perfectly Clear as a form of what I describe as disembodiment-embodiment, allowing the audience-participant to experience a sense of intimate embrace that challenges commonly held preconceptions of touch, sight, and the feeling of ones’ physical body in space.
Grounded in Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the embodied subject, I focus on three broad categories of installation art, each of which creates an affective response of virtual touch through senses of sight and proprioception: telematic performance using video-conferencing technology, digitally reactive animations, and immersive sculptures of light designed to decenter the perceptual and visual senses. Along with works by artists Paul Sermon, Adrien M & Claire B, teamLab, and James Turrell, I include analyses of two research performances I created, Being Present (2016) and (dis)embodied in space (2019), both of which entangled live and mediatized bodies through telematic video technology. Each of the artworks that I include place an emphasis on the embodied experience, engaging bodies in interactions of virtual touch with other bodies, with digitally reactive artworks, and with light and space. Throughout this dissertation, I argue for a rethinking of concepts of touch, intimacy, and connection in the digital age.