The Body in Digital Space

Book chapter, 2015

The aim of this paper is to investigate the perception of space in the context of digital architecture. Our starting point is the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty’s concept of ‘flesh’ which is the common background to the dialogue between the body and the world and to the bodily intertwining of perception and the perceived world. In this paper we’ll analyze the relations between the body and space and we’ll try to answer this question: if architectural, urban structures are designed for the experience of the body’s motor faculties, does digital design, by modifying space-time categories of the lived-body and brain’s treatmentof spatial perceptions, open new paths of experience? In our analysis architecture – as the fundamental science of inhabiting spaces – should be considered the existential and concrete counterpart of our being-in the-world.This article is an extended version of a paper presented at ISEA International symposium on Electronic Art – Digital Media, Space and Architecture, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University,Istanbul, Turkey 2011.