'Digital (dis)embodiment in human practices'

'Digital (dis)embodiment in human practices'

March 26-27, 2026

Mary Immaculate College Limerick, Ireland  

In this workshop, our curiosity is drawn to how human embodiment takes shape in respect of digital worlds and through digital art practices; we have a particular interest in philosophical and phenomenological perspectives on how lived bodies are represented, reconfigured, and re-enacted in both problematic and promising manners through digital media. We aim to advance a burgeoning, interdisciplinary discussion about the challenges and innovative possibilities of 're-locating' human embodied experience and practices within the digital domain, and to arrive at a robust understanding of just what such a relocation supposes and entails - if there is indeed anything such as 'digital embodiment' at all. To those ends, we are seeking dialogue between practicing artists and philosophers from different tradtions and with different interests.

Location: Mary Immaculate College, John Henry Newman Building, room JHN221  

Programme:

March 26

9:30 - 10:15 “The Landscape is Where We find Ourselves: Embodiment and The Digital Landscape”- Micheal Butler and Michael Conlan (University of North Dakota, Grands Forks)

10:15 - 11:00 "Biomimicry in Digital Embodiment: Toward a Generative Concept of Virtual Bodies" - Donald Beith (University of Maine)

11:15 - 12:00 “Seeing what to do: affective responses, social norms, and action in the digital world” - Leda Berio (University College Dublin)

12:00 - 12:45 “Arguing with echoes. The unsettling tensions of digitally enacted linguistic bodies” - Marek McGann (Mary Immaculate College)

14:00 - 14:45 “Digital Malfunctions: Subversive Play in Deleuze’s Philosophy of Thinking” - Corry Shores (Middle Eastern Technical University)

14:45 - 15:30 “Silence screaming or Scream silencing: Examining ‘technomythology’ via mythological and posthuman voices’ ambiguities” - Katerina Maniou (University of Athens)

15:45 - 16:30 “Learning in Motion: The Future of STEAM Through Digital Embodiment” - Ayşegül Liman Kaban and Kayla Rush (Mary Immaculate College)

16:30 - 17:15 "Artificial Intelligence and the Emergence of the Algorithmic Unconscious” - Luca Possati (University of Twente)  

March 27

9:45 - 10:30 “DIS_EMBODIED: Experimental artistic research into post-bodily human existence” - Marleine van der Werf (independent visual artist, Rotterdam, the Netherlands)

10:45 - 11:30 “Empathy, Reciprocity, and Reversibility in BeAnotherLab’s ‘Machine to Be Another’” - Catherine Fullarton (University of King’s College)

11:30 - 12:15 "Digital Patchwork for a Quilting Tradition" - Brooke Rudow (University of Central Florida)

1:45 - 2:30 “Against Digital Embodiment As Such” - Robin Parmar (University of Limerick)

2:30 - 3:15 “Neither ‘dis’ nor ‘em’: my body and another’s numbers” - Giuseppe Torre (University of Limerick) and Basil Vassilicos (Mary Immaculate College)

3:15 - 3:45 Closing remarks, discussion  

All are welcome. This workshop is being organised in collaboration with the Digital Worlds Workshop (https://digitalworldsworkshop.com/), and is being generously supported by the Department of Philosophy (Mary Immaculate College), the Institute for Interdisciplinary and Engaged Philosophy (Mary Immaculate College), and the Digital Media & Art Research (University of Limerick).

For queries, please contact the organisers, Basil Vassilicos and Giuseppe Torre.