The Networked Body: Physicality, Embodiment, and Latency in Multisite Performance Available to Purchase

This chapter explores bodily ramifications of multisite networked music, sometimes called telematics, in which improvisation serves a principal role. Drawing on interviews and musical analysis related to the 2010 networked concert titled “Inspiraling: Telematic Jazz Explorations,” and calling on George E. Lewis’s concept of the Afrological and Vijay Iyer’s notion of microtiming, Robinson suggests that cognitive dissonances produced by latency in networked performance bring into relief the relationship of distant bodies in networked performance as well as ideas about a futurist vision of zero-latency telecommunications. Moreover, issues related to latency suggest that embodiment and disembodiment are deeply connected to a persistent desire to reinscribe telematics in the cognitive modes of traditional, in-the-same-room performance.