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Chapter 4
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-5469-1.ch004
ABSTRACT
This chapter interrogates the notion of the liminal in relation to the virtual and the imaginary through a
consideration of the feld of art, science, and technology and current creative practices in virtual worlds
and avatar-mediated space. In particular, the art project Meta-Dreamer (2009) is considered through
the manifestation of the avatar as digital object. In its attempt to explore the experience of “living
between worlds,” it refects the concerns of contemporary arts practice exploration of time and space
relationships. The art project is re-examined in light of key arguments in the provocative text Liminal
Lives (Squier, 2004) that advocates a new approach to the liminal in light of current biomedicine and
the shifting and emergent qualities of contemporary human life.
INTRODUCTION
In the field of Art and Technology the ease in which we experience the liminal through virtual space
is even more pronounced when the space is avatar-mediated creating an oscillating state of existence
between the virtual and the physical
1
. Yet both consciousness and the imagination depend on this lim-
inality of space. With a focus on the ‘threshold’ this continual ‘about to become’ is almost a necessary
condition of being. Some virtual environments (or worlds) deliberately play with this “existential overlay
to the physical” (Lichty 2009, p.2). Working with a new framework of the emergent imagination con-
sideration is given to the transitional spaces created in artworks in virtual world spaces where aspects
of the liminal come to the fore.
This chapter discussion reconsiders a previous text written by the author entitled Living between
Worlds: Imagination, Liminality and Avatar-Mediated Presence (Doyle, 2012) in light of the key issues
and arguments explored by Susan Merrill Squier in her pioneering and provocative text Liminal Lives:
Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine (2004). Arguing from the fields of literature and
feminist science studies Squier challenges Victor Turner’s notion of the liminal as a purely cultural con-
Exploring Liminal Practices in
Art, Technology, and Science
Denise Doyle
University of Wolverhampton, UK