This creative practice-based doctoral research project explores the mediated body through the development of three major practice-based public research works which engage with themes of gestural performance, the mediated body and language. These three major public artworks were presented as performances between 2018 and 2021, utilising a practice-based methodology that incorporated theoretical research and studio-based rehearsal and development. The artworks produced during this research project demonstrate how performance art can contribute to new ways of perceiving and critically engaging with contemporary forms of networked communication. This research utilises performance art as a mode to critically reflect on network-based communication and actively uses networks in various forms as vital participants in final artworks.

In this accompanying dissertation, the methodology of each performance work is elaborated upon to demonstrate how each project allows for complementary yet distinct modes of engagement with the larger themes of the research. Together, this dissertation and the attendant creative practice seek to engage in public debate on the mediated body at the intersection of contemporary art, performance art, media theory and network culture.

      This dissertation seeks to contribute new knowledge in the form of a creative practice engagement with questions centred on the mediated body, performance art and its relationship to notions of performativity online. This research utilises a creative practice-based methodology and reflects my own institutional position between the Schools of Media and Communications and School of Art at RMIT University. Expanded audiovisual documentation of the artworks that accompany the written component of the research project is accessible at http://phd.emilezile.com.

      The scope of my creative practice output centres around three large-scale creative projects that utilise performance art to explore the role of gesture and the mediated body. These works were generated and presented across the three years of my doctoral project and are elaborated on in detail throughout this submission. The three major performance-based works developed as part of my PhD research and discussed within this document are Performer/Audience/Lens (after Dan Graham), a solo performance in Melbourne (2018) and Amsterdam (2020); Becoming The Icon (my capitalisation), a performance film in collaboration with Melbourne dancer and choreographer Lilian Steiner (2018–20); and 4500 Lumens (2021), a solo performance delivered in Melbourne as part of the National Gallery of Victoria Triennial EXTRA performance program.