Body Options

»Body Options II« (2022) is the latest installation by Mateusz Dworczyk, which was on display at Kiel's art association »Kunstraum B«. In his transmedial practice, the media artist explores the interplay between technology, the human body, and its pictorial representation. The focus lies particularly on photo-based digital imaging techniques such as machine learning and 3D technology. The work is built on the subset of results of an artificial neural network (trained on a self-created data set of ballet dancers) which contains outcomes that are usually defined as errors in the image-generating process. Those »errors« are then translated into three-dimensional space by using 3D-Software. The images of these sculpted bodies appear in competition with normative body representations and the subjective body images of the visitors themselves. They infest the exhibition space, materialise, and affect the viewer. They show the power and impact of immaterial transclassical machines like artificial neural networks and remind us that technical instruments, apparatuses, and systems have always had anthropological relevance and a considerable influence on the idea of the human body, its function, form, and image. »Body Options II« opens up a space of imagination that oscillates between present possibilities and future scenarios. However, neither angstlust-rhetoric (the pleasure of fright) nor fear of technology is the subject of the work. But rather the question of the omnipresent relationship between technology, the human body, and the ever-changing image of the body. Dworczyk aims to question the functional logic of technology which is transferred to the body. His work tries to visually oppose the inherent tendencies of standardisation, optimisation, and utilitarianism, as well as the organisation of the body into an organism through the artistic examination of a body without organs.