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This study traces Nam June Paik's intermedial art and cybernetic vision in his German period (1956-63) from the diverse activities as an Action Musician to the making of electronic media artwork. Most of the information was gathered from Paik's writings, correspondences and interviews. Much literature ofPaik extols the new possibilities offered by Video Art, but Paik's early days in Germany, and his intermedial practice and cybernetic strategy of the period have been little explored. This study attempts to examine Paik's German period based on the concepts of intermedia and Cybernetics. Part I (chapters 1-3) provides the historical and conceptual background ofPaik's art. It explains how Paik's avant-garde spirit began during his childhood; and it shows, in turn, how it had been developed to his dissertation on Arnold Schonberg in post-war Japan. Part I then focuses on the post-war techno-cultural discourses as tools for Paik's understanding of the relationship between electronic technology and human sensory perception before examining ./ the art historical context ofPaik's art through such avant-garde practices as Richard Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk, John Cage's Experimental Music, the Darmstadt School and Fluxus. Part II (chapters 4-6) analyses Paik's artistic activities in Germany from a view of intermedia and Cybernetics. It is intended to contribute to an interdisciplinary project of mapping the early history ofNam June Paik's art. It argues that Paik German period represented an aesthetical moment in which the intermedial communication between body, language and technology were being reconfigured, and it suggests that Cybernetics played a significant role in framing Paik's ideas about complexity, interactivity, and participative creativity around this shifting technological landscape.

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My project is a consideration of how new technologies impact on the body in performance. The affect of digital media and virtual reality on conventional notions of physicality and representation is initiating a radical rethink on how we define and understand body/performance art. The question of how and where we locate the internal and external self, an issue that is crucial for artists who use their bodies, is further emphasised through new technological mediation. This signals the possibility of new thinking about presence and exchange within body/performance art. I am primarily interested in how new technologies facilitate different sorts of exchange between artwork/artist and audience. I contend that when the performing body is immersed in new technologies it’s desires and anxieties are exposed. The intersubjective relation generated between the work and audience – the phenomenological experience of a public performance of self – is consequently revealed as erotic. I aim to reconfigure contemporary ideas of performance as dependent on immediate presence (liveness). In the performance of self, as embodied by the artist in performance, the conventional distinction between fixed notions of subject and object is collapsed into an intersubjective dynamic. My analysis of this relation is informed by Merleau-Ponty’s reading of the relationship between the visible and the invisible as a ‘chiasmic intertwining’. Accordingly, rather than proceed from the idea of a split between artists and viewer/s, I examine the intersubjective dynamic as an exchange of flesh. I use the term ‘technophenomenological’ to describe the enworlded nature of the relationships between bodies, machines and media. I extend this understanding by drawing on psychoanalytic concepts of incorporation and narcissism, on cinema and media theory and on theories of excess and waste. I endeavour to ‘write through’ my practice, sometimes anecdotally and sometimes intuitively, to evolve a dialogue between my practice and theoretical concerns. (A. Ponton, Abstract)

This thesis considers how the making of artwork can enhance or develop an experience of being present. This is done through researching what it means to be present within the moment and how this can be shared with audience. An exploration and analysis of this way of working is provided, both in terms of the research process and artwork outcomes made as a consequence of it. The entanglement of process with outcome is central, as is the interrelatedness between personal research and artworks presented to audience. Activated presence refers to a way of researching, making and presenting performative artwork; artwork made from a place of attention to the moment. This is the expanded moment of Eastern philosophy, Christian mysticism and the new physics; what Varela describes as the 'deep now' (qtd. in Mulder 18). This notion of activated presence also refers to, and acknowledges, the collaboration between ideas, materials, artist and audience in the creation of artwork. My initial approach is to make personal research explorations, utilising the terrain of Dartmoor1 as a starting point, with walking and documenting as essential tools for this exploration of presence. Initial plans to create outcomes utilising digital technologies are dispensed with in favour of physical exploration of site, utilising audio-visual recording technologies as tools for the documentation of presence. These documentary outcomes form the basis for further investigations, whether through installation or video artwork. A more direct and inclusive relationship to audience is then considered; where the artwork outcomes investigate and acknowledge the notion of activated presence, through audience participation. This practice forms the heart of the thesis, through both critical and reflective writing, and associated audio-visual documentation. Also included are short edits of associated video artwork (DVD and DVD Rom).

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Exploring the connections and conflicts within politicised socially engaged new media art practices has involved an investigation into the language, characteristics and methodologies of visual art, new medi~ art (NMA) and socially engaged art (SEA), as well as the hybrid practice of socially engaged new media art (SENMA). The investigation includes research through the practice of curating RISK: Creative Action in Political Culture which presented SEA and NMA practice and encouraged dialogue which informed the themes and vocabularies.The thesis focuses on the vocabulary used to: understand values of object and process; define and utilise different kinds of tools; and describe differences between concepts of interactivity, participation and collaboration. It then contextualises the political relevance of these themes by situating them within current theoretical debates about politicised creative practice in chapter 5, mapping the tensions of political intent, strategy and tactics, distribution and distance. Topologies of different types of networks, platforms and open source development methodologies are used to map parallel concepts between politicised NMA and SEA.