The XXIII CIM was conceived from the urge of filling gaps between absence and presence, past and present, abstract and physical. One interpretation of this topic is obvious: the forced stop that affected the arts and de-materialized the physical body of the performer and the musical instruments into a stream of data. This social issue had an impact on the computer music community, driving new trends in network-mediated performance, fostering new research questions on the future of the arts, but also showing how fragile is culture without physical interactions. Our intention here is to physically gather the community again to put the in-presence physical body as the object of artistic and social debate: the body of the performer, the body as an instrument and the body of the instrument.