SUBPROJECTS – New methodologies

Theoretical, academic and scientific research, Technical development and Artistic development.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF CASE STUDIES/SUBPROJECTS RELATED TO EXPECTED OUTCOMES AND PROJECT ACTIVITIES

In Relation to the 4 main expected outcomes:

  1. New methodologies, platforms and networks for transdisciplinary research, creation, dissemination and learning. To develop new approaches for the understanding of expression, emotion and cognition – To generate a novel technocultural paradigm for communication and the arts, which foregrounds embodied knowledge and cognition – Academic research outlining a new field for the understanding of cultural diversity, in the domain of non-verbal communication, expression and emotions.
  2. Tools for understanding and raising awareness of cultural diversity.
  3. Tools to foster embodied communication for a sustainable culture.
  4. An interactive mobile architectural structure for outdoor spaces. Laboratory and observatory of diversity.

EXPECTED OUTCOME New methodologies, platforms and networks for transdisciplinary research, creation, dissemination and learning. To develop new approaches for the understanding of expression, emotion and cognition – To generate a novel technocultural paradigm for communication and the arts, which foregrounds embodied knowledge and cognition – Academic research outlining a new field for the understanding of cultural diversity, in the domain of non-verbal communication, expression and emotions.

  1. Metastudy. (Reverso) – study on the development of transdisciplinary methodologies of the project.
  2. Ontologies of movement. (Reverso) – philosophy of movement as substrate for redefining technoscieces and communication.
  3. Birth of dualistic perception. (Reverso) – philosophy of perception as substrate for redefining technoscieces and communication.
  4. Big Data Brother – Ontology and politics of data.(Reverso) – Study of the implications of Big Data for the increase of control and the deep ontological transformations it brings about, as source for a Media Ethics White Paper.
  5. Civilizing Process and Nature Studies. (UAM – Eva Botella) – historical study of cultural embeddeness of the technoscientific and artistic research done in the project.
  6. Comparative Study of the history of biometrics and emotions: 1870-2014. A comparative approach. (UAM – Eva Botella and Leicester Univ. – Beatriz Pichel) – study of the history of analysis of movement and the body, of Biometrics and control, in relation to current technoscientific and artistic approaches.
  7. Loïe Fuller as dancescientist. (UAM – Eva Botella and Leicester Univ. – Beatriz Pichel) – study of Loïe Fuller as example of transdisciplinary bridge accross arts and science.
  8. Audiences in digital art works. (Fabrica de movimentos) – understanding the redefinition of the audience that the new interactive processes of the project poses.
  9. Ecology of perception & OnSite urban explorations. (UAM – Jose Luis Carles and Cristina Palmese) – methods for intervening in urban spaces through exploring sensation and movement in new ways.
  10. Strata – Urban Fluxus(UAM- Jose Luis Carles and Cristina Palmese) – methodologies of intervening in urban space studying the case of AZCA.
  11. Robots and Emotions: Theories, Prescriptions, and Ethical Implications. (NYIT – Kevin LaGrandeur- Associated Partner) – study of the ethical implication of reductive approaches in simulating emotions, bridging philosophy, ethics and technosciences.
  12. Cybersecurity and the digitized Human. (NYIT – Kevin LaGrandeur- Associated Partner) – study of the ethical issues raised by cybersecurty projects of DARPA.
  13. Software and Embodiment. (Oxford Brookes – Federica Frabetti- Associated Partner) – study of materiality and cultural embeddedness of software – bridging accross philosophy and technosciences.
  14. Philosophical dimensions of the concept of embodiment – (Yvonne Foerster – Leuphana Universität – Associated Partner) – to outline the philosophical dimensions  of the concept of embodiment, which is one of the fundamental topics in Metabody.

 


Metastudy

Reverso – Jaime del Val.

Description:
Metamethodological study exploring the complexities of transdisciplinary research-creation and the different ethical and philosophical challenges faced by a project such as METABODY.

Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes:
The study how collaborations happen in the project itself, between partners and in the large environment, is crucial so as to develop new transdisciplinary methodologies, allowing to bridge accross the different fields of the project: arts, technosciences, humanities and social minorities.

What has been done:
Elaboration and exchanges of drafts, brainstorming and discussions in the Forums, keeping track of the developments and analysing the collaborations.

Results:
Presentation at the partner Meetings in the Forums, influencing the overall development and structuring of the project. Stages of the analysis have been presented and discussed online and in the Fora.


Ontologies of movement

Reverso – Jaime del Val.
Description:
Philosophical research on philosophy of movement.

Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes:
METABODY’s proposal to renew the understanding of the embodied expressions, of the body, and communication as embodied process, involves an ontological redefiniton of movement. This is due to the fact that under current deterministic and probabilistic accounts of communication there is a mechanistic understanding of movement as external property of preexisting bodies. The project aims at inverting this definition and proposing the body as an effect of movements, not the reverse, thus any communication act is understood in terms of movement, as embodied process.

What has been done:
Philosophical research on movement in ancient greek philosophy, history of perception in relation to movement philosophy, research into current philosophies of movement.

Results:


Birth of dualistic perception

Reverso – Jaime del Val .

Description:
Research on the origins of current dualistic media.

Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes:
One of the main purposes of the Metabody project is to afford new kinds of multisensory perceptions, as well as understanding the homogenisation of expressions in information society. This study argues that underlying this process there is a long history of perceptual engineering through architecture and other technologies of perception. The project aims to produce a new paradigm of non-dualistic media and it is therefore crucial to understand how dualistic media came about to become a dominant formation. The study focuses on the birth of dualistic perception in Ancient Greece, through architecture and other embodied practices.

What has been done:
Philosophical, archeological and historical research on history on perception in relation to movement, architecture and technology.

Results:
Paper presented at Posthuman Politics conference in Greece.


Big Data Brother
Ontology and politics of data

Reverso – Jaime del Val .

Description:
Research into the implications of new control technologies related to Big data.
The era of datacentrism and infoexplosion, that is embodied in the unprecedented expansion of Big Data -understood as the increasingly sophisticated processing of infinite data bases- presents a fundamental change of ontological dimensions in the operations of power and the social body and demands new critical and creative tools that may help understand the extent and depth of these changes, facilitating new modes of resistance and response.
In the framework of a planetary euphoria that present Big Data as the panacea of a new economy and world order some critical voices are emerging, yet current discourses around Big Data require further deepening into the novel issues it raises while understanding the obsoleteness of prior discursive and political frameworks in relation to it.
Beyond the discourses that limit themselves to the defense of privacy or those that advocate public or open data, we should perhaps ask ourselves how far Big Data entails a dissapearing of both the private and the public in a new logic of power and control that requires novel critical and creative strategies.
It is therefore necessary to define which are the conditions of possibility of data, what is their ontology and economy, in order to define an ecology and politics of data and a new horizon of alternatives.

Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes:
This subproject deals with a fundamental aspect of the project: how is it that information techologies operate as control as survailleance technologies that homogenise our behaviours through empoverishing non-verbal communication.

What has been done:

Big Data Brother (English)
Big Data Brother (Spanish)

Results:

  •  Transdisciplinary methodologies and tools for diversity and media ethics policies.
  • Conferences (see above).
  • Papers and publications (see above).

Comparative Study of the history of biometrics and emotions: 1870-2014. A comparative approach

UAM – Eva Botella (UAM) & De Montfor University Leicester – Beatriz Pichel – Iris Rodríguez Alcaide (UAM).

Description:
The beginning of photography and specially cinema, the movement of nature studies, the theory of evolution, eugenics, psychology, anthropology and biometrics were related disciplines in creation around 1870s. While current media studies, biology, eugenics, psychology, emotional studies and biometrics have technologically changed much since then, we have explored: 1. In which sense there have been changes. 2. The historical and philosophical bases of both the emergence of this paradigm and such changes. 3. The way in which the nascent disciplines affected everyday practices and how they constructed the body by means of captures, as well as its effects in the general population and their cultural experiences and practices. 4. The same thing in relation to nowadays practices. 5. The identification of historical cases that resisted the standardization of these gestures and proposed alternative interpretations in order to recognize what these disciplines cannot measure and the scientific, philosophical and historical consequences. 6. The consequences for the general population.
UAM Departament Modern History.

Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes:
The study analyses how biometrics, as control technology is embedded in specific historical traditions. These different approaches to the body, their techniques, measures and representation show a rich kinetic European cultural and material heritage and, at the same time how these traditions underlie current homogenization processes, and are crucial subject of critique in METABODY.

What has been done:
CIVILIZING BIOMETRICS – Eva Botella (UAM) Analyses late nineteenth century human and animal comparative psychology and criminology, the fixation of species and genera, and their relation with the standard of civilization and social control, affecting the conception of international order and scientific research. The main focus of this study is the “social species” (insects and humans), through the materials used remarkable scientists of the time, such as Galton, Darwin, Forel, Evans, Lombroso. Nowadays research on so called “complex systems” ants and neural systems are compared, and the comparison remains essential for the concept of “emergence”. We would like to open the question for discussion about the role of “data” in these processes and in research.

  • Presented as a paper at the Genoa Forum 2014.
  • Creation of a dropbox folder with bibliography and other relevant information to work and exchange with Jaime del Val, Muriel Romero, Yvonne Foerster, Beatriz Pichel, Iris Rodríguez and other international collaborators (about the general case study) and a specific folder (about the specific case study to work with Beatriz Pichel and Iris Rodríguez).

Results:

  • In 2014, as part of IFM Madrid, directed a workshop at La Casa Encendida (Photography and Physicality), inviting the associated partner Beatriz Pichel, and the collaborator Leticia Fernández-Fontecha.
  • Coorganization of the2014 conference: “History and ontologies of gestures-movement”, UAM, Madrid 11th July, 2014. Coorganizers: Eva Botella Ordinas (UAM) and Jaime del Val (Reverso) , presentations, introductory and final notes on the conference, and chairing panels.
  • Preparation of a workshop at La Casa Encendida, 2015 (collaborator: Iris Rodríguez): “Historias del gesto y políticas del movimiento” (Histories of Gesture and politics of Movement).
  • Coorganization of the 2015 unconference: “Hacking Big Data Brother: From Biometrics to Intra-action”. International Unconference, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 21-22 July 2015.
  • In 2015, a workshop at Medialab Prado, in collaboration with Beatriz Pichel and Iris Rodríguez: “Expressing Cruelty, Anger and Disdain: gesture and movement”.
  • Working group in collaborations with Yvonne Foerster-Beuthan and Federica Frabetti since March, 2015: “Biometrics, Embodied Data, Gender and Affects. Questions on Theory.” (part of the Madrid IFM 2015 production week).
  • Paper in Madrid 2015 conference: “Civilizing Biometrics”.
  • Publication of this paper as: “CIVILIZING BIOMETRICS: 1. Eusociality and data”, METABODY Journal of Metacultural Critique nº2, 2016. (3000 words).
  • Publication of a scientific article: “Cruelty vs. Civilization. Subalterns, Emotions and the History of International Law,” Pakistan Journal of Historical Studies, n. 1. Emotions and Marginalized Communities, 2016 (in review process, 8000 words).

Civilizing process and nature studies.

The sciences, the environment, humanimals, and identity fixation.
UAM – Eva Botella.

Description:
Sciences had been affected by political and social conceptions. During the last years of the XIX century some of them, such as biology, medicine, psychology, anthropology, neurosciences, nature studies, pedagogy, photography, show a shift, if not a dramatic change in light of new inventions-creations and new perceptions of beings, time and space. These changes are in the basis of how we perceive the world and how we relate to-within-it in every sense. The research will deal with many of the METABODY topics through Legal history (concepts of responsibility, agency or sustainability), history of science and cognition (illegible affects, embodiment, tech, in-motion, cognition, agency, synesthesia, emergence), history of culture (unexpected, mediation, change), and philosophy. UAM Departament Modern History.

Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes:
A critical and historical contextualization that allows critical and creative elaboration of transdisciplinary methodologies and reflections on crucial METABODY topics through Legal history (concepts of responsibility, individual, agency or sustainability), history of science and cognition (emotion, affects, embodiment, tech, motion, cognition, agency, synesthesia, emergence, data, reaction time, objectivity, gesture), history of culture and philosophy (nature, rationality, unexpected, mediation, change ).

  • Presented at Dresden Forum 2013.

What has been done:
SPECIFIC CASE-STUDY (paper in working process) REASON´S PERFORMANCES deals with the concept of the subject of the measures, in relation to both the cultural background of its creation and to the performativity requirements. It is centered in the study of John Locke: considered either a founder or a crucial contributor to disciplines as diverse as psychology, economics, education, political science, language studies or philosophy. The Enlightened descriptions of the universal rational and conscious subject required kinetic performances and construction was deeply embodied. He was shaped by cultural emotions such as disgust or pleasure, cruelty or humanity, modelled by performativity, gestural and kinetic practices, fixing the standards of normality, capabilities and civilization status. His late reception and relevance makes this analysis crucial, and one of its aims is to open an inter-trans-metadisciplinary discussion on the kinetics of reason, including “reaction time”.

  • Discussions about some central Metabody concepts with most partners: INFOMUS (agency, cognition and performativity), HYPERBODY (swarms and agency), STOCOS (neural narratives, cognition and motion), Palindrome (about emotions, gestures and illegibility), REVERSO (about Data, Big Data and agency), and other partners about rationality, cognition, reaction time, neural narratives, agency, gender, disability and performativity, such as Yvonne Foerster, Federica Frabetti, Beatriz Pichel and Kevin LaGrandeur.
  • Creation of a dropbox folder with bibliography and other relevant information to work and exchange with Jaime del Val, Muriel Romero, Yvonne Foerster, Beatriz Pichel, Iris Rodríguez and other international collaborators.
  • Preparation of a presentation of the specific case study at the Amsterdam Forum 2014

Results:

  • Coorganization of the 2013 conference: “Multiplicities in Motion. Affects, Embodiment and the Reversal of Cybernetics. 3000 years of Post-human History”, Medialab-Prado, Madrid, 26-30 July 2013.
  • Paper presented at the 2013 conference: “Posthuman Locke: the Enlightened roots of the Posthuman Subject”.
  • Paper at.Dresden Forum 2013: “Civilizing Process and Nature Studies During the Imperial Era”.
  • At the Genoa Forum 2014: Questionnaire PRACTICE 1. CASE STUDY: CIVILIZING PROCESS AND NATURE-STUDIES – sent by Eva Botella to all partners after Dresden Forum and is being exchanged online, related to Metamethodologies.
  • Publication: “History of the invention and performativity of reason, emotions and data,” METABODY Journal of Metacultural Critique nº1 MULTIPLICITIES IN MOTION. OPEN SOURCE BODIES-SPACES, 2015.
  • Publication of a scientific article (combination of this and the previous case study): “Cruelty vs. Civilization. Subalterns, Emotions and the History of International Law,” Pakistan Journal of Historical Studies, n. 1. Emotions and Marginalized Communities, 2016 (in review process, 8000 words).
  • Eva Botella-Ordinas, “Reason´s Performances”, (polishing a final draft to send for publication: 12.500 words). Possible scientific journals: Humanimalia, Pakistan Journal of Historical Studies, Locke Studies; Isis.

Loïe Fuller as Dancescientist

UAM – Eva Botella & De Montfor University Leicester.

Description:
During the XX Century disciplines created a divide not only between humanities‐philosophy and science, but between science and art, and with it a separation between creation and discovery, related to two binaries, and four concepts: body‐mind and facts‐invention. We would like to explore the historical, philosophical, kinetic, mass‐media and scientific path from the last quarter of the XIX century to our days, to understand the changes that happened in relation to this divide. A central figure is Loie Fuller, because she was both a scientist and an artist, friend of scientists, artists and humanists. Not only that: she was both a woman and a lesbian. Her scientific career is not covered probably due to all these circumstances, resulting in the remembering of Loie Fuller only as a precursor of contemporary dance performance. On the contrary, this project will interpret Fuller’s dance as an artistic response to questions that were supposed to belong to scientific disciplines.
UAM Departament Modern History.

Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes:
This study aims at providing ground for transdisicplinary methodologies which are a main outcome of METABODY, involving research from dance to different scientific disciplines to understand the standardization of movement and gesture by the mechanistic models of physiology.
What has been done:

  • Conversations with partners (especially interesting for DAP-Lab, Reverso, Brisa MP and Fabrica de Movimentos )and preparation of the case study, with Beatriz Pichel, researching for bibliography and sources, creating a dropbox folder to share with partners and some international collaborators in order to see how Fuller´s role affected Metabody´s subprojects and as a possible link between different disciplines.
    Results:
  • Introduction at the partner Meeting in the Madrid Forum in July 2014 and invitation to work through a shared dropbox folder with bibliography and sources.

Audiences in digital art works

FM – Alberto Magno.

Description:
The project proposes rethinking audiences in intra-active /interactive environments.
Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes: The Metabody project challenges traditional notions of audience since it proposes new formats of interaction /intra-action in which participants are more intimately and deeply involved in the process, whereby the notion of metaformance proposed by the project points at how the body/participants experiments a transformation of its own perception/proprioception, rather than assuming a fixed position of spectator. This implies also to redefine the ways of monitoring audience participation not in quantitative terms but in qualitative terms. The project is thus reflecting also on how to assess and monitor the Metabody project and its results.

What has been done:

  • Preliminary research.
  • Introduction of the idea in the Genoa and Madrid forums 2014.

Results:

  • Preliminary research.
  • Methologogies, questionnaires, practical research based on the work developed by partners and presented in the forums.

Ecology of perception & OnSite urban explorations

Jose Luis Carles – from UAM – and Cristina Palmese.

Description:
Methodologies to work on specific urban sites related to ecological and social aspects of perception. Research including on site walks in the city, thinking of the future implications of the space and the relation to the city.
Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes: Understand urban space as space of difference which depend on the different perceptions afforded by different approaches to movement and behaviour. Inventing new relations to urban space affords a true space of difference and plurality for emergent perceptions and behaviours. The study of how to intervene in public space is also crucial with regard to the tour of the final architecture. This project proposes to develop and implement a methodology for intervention in space that is coherent with the project’s intentions.

What has been done:

  • Presentation at the Genoa Forum 2014.
  • Workshop and perceptual exploration tours in the Madrid Forum 2014, in connection also with the Disalignments project.

Results so far:

  • Layout of methodologies and testing through workshops.

Future results:

  • Further elaboration of the methodologies.
  • Proposals of future Publications.

Urban Fluxus
STRATA. ACTIONS IN THE URBAN SPACE

Jose Luis Carles – from UAM – and Cristina Palmese.
Carles, Laura García, Juan Camilo Sánchez, Victor Pastor, Carlos Estrella. Marisa Luceño, Fatima Martin, Javier Sanchez, Shary.

Description:
There is a statement nowadays that is so commonplace: we live in the civilization of image. According to this topic, we live in a civilization submitted to the power of images in which the attention of theoreticians, researchers, even of designers or planners is centered fundamentally on visual perception. In a culture limited by the prevalence of visual objects, we hardly pay attention to the perceptual complexity of our body. Our perceptions are submitted to geometry, and to discreet and simplified observation, which enables a better control by means of prototypical designs and remote control, handling our interaction with the environment, of our desires, in some exhausted bodies, aligned.

Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes:
Methodologies for intervening urban space in relation to the future architecture pavillion.

What has been done:
Workshop in AZCA in Metabody Forum 2015 Madrid including preliminary research and publication afterwards.
The first place chosen for our experimentation is Azca, one of the business centers and also the headquarters of the most important offices of the city of Madrid and characterized to house some of buildings more remarkable from the point of view of architecture and the urban landscape, as we can see in BBVA Building bank or Torre Picasso building.
The setting of this area is like an island with regards to the city. Its design, of a rigid geometry, responds to some private and commercial values, making impossible any possibility of the users’ creative experience. The range of possible activities allowed in this space is really reduced and controlled, catching its users in expressions and journeys pre – constituted, being also a space devoted to previously defined model of healthy body, basically inaccessibility and impossible to be shared by any type of difference.

Results:

  • Layout of methodologies and testing through workshops.
  • Publication, forthcoming in Metabody Journal II.
  • The research has been channeled in the organisation of a Congress on Sound and Audiovisual Spaces (Espaciossonoros2015.blogspot)

Robots and Emotions: Theories, Prescriptions, and Ethical Implications

Kevin LaGrandeur – Associated partner NYIT.

Description:
Research into the implications of programming emotions and ethics in robots. Emotion simulation is one of the contemporary trends where homogenisation of expressions is most sharply being fostered.

Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes:
The METABODY projects aims at challenging many of the assumptions underlying the reductive approach to emotion simulation that happens in robotics and other fields. The ethical dimension of that process is a crucial field of research for METABODY.

What has been done:
Elaboration of scientific research and scientific paper on the subject.

Results:

  • Presented in the Madrid 2013 Forum. Robots and Emotions: Theories, Prescriptions, and Ethical Implications – This paper was then expanded and published as the Article “Emotions, Artificial Intelligence, and Ethics,” in Beyond Artificial Intelligence: The Disappearing Human-Machine Divide. Eds. Jan Romportl, Eva Zackova, Jozef Kelemen. (Book Series: Topics in Intelligent Engineering and Informatics Volume 9. Berlin: Springer Press, 2014. 97-109. ) With full acknowledgement of Metabody and the European Union Grant. https://youtu.be/XtFklkDwRkk
  • Publication and field research related to Metabody developments.
  • Kevin LaGrandeur – Associated partner – NYIT – essay “Emotions, Artificial Intelligence, and Ethics,” in Beyond Artificial Intelligence: The Disappearing Human-Machine Divide. Eds. Jan Romportl, Eva Zackova, Jozef Kelemen. (Book Series: Topics in Intelligent Engineering and Informatics Volume 9. Berlin: Springer Press, 2014. 97-109. ) With full acknowledgement of Metabody and the European Union Grant.

Cybersecturity and the Digitized Human

Kevin LaGrandeur – Associated partner NYIT.

Description:
Research into the implications of codification of human behaviour and traits for security purposes. Converting human behaviour to data is another contemporary trend where homogenisation and levelling of human traits and behaviour is most sharply being fostered.

Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes:

The METABODY projects aims at challenging many of the assumptions underlying the reductive approach to emotion and behaviour simulation that happens with digital technology. The ethical dimension of that process is a crucial field of research for METABODY.

What has been done:

  • Elaboration of scientific research and scientific paper on the subject.

Results:

  • Presented in the Madrid 2015 Forum. Cybersecurity and the Digitized Human – This paper was also published as an Article in the second Metabody Journal issue. It has also been published in an open-source website for academic work: Academia.edu, with full acknowledgement of Metabody and the European Union Grant.
  • Publication and field research related to Metabody developments.
  • Kevin LaGrandeur – Cybersecurity and the Digitized Human – forthcoming in the second Metabody Journal issue. It has also been published in an open-source website for academic work: Academia.edu, with full acknowledgement of Metabody and the European Union Grant.

Philosophical dimensions of the concept of embodiment

Yvonne Foerster – Leuphana Universität.

Description:
I focused on three dimensions or aspects of embodiment which are relevant also in the artistic projects: Embodiment and Temporality, the problem of anthropocentrism and bodies in relation to media and data-gathering technologies. My aim was to develop a conceptual fundament, which serves as a means to discuss philosophical implications of embodiment strategies and integrate artistic and scientific aspects. This was an ongoing process with no specific result. The idea was to reflect on various forms of embodiment and bodily expressions in order to provide a forum for an interdisciplinary discussion.

Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes: Yo outline the philosophical dimensions of the concept of embodiment, which is one of the fundamental topics in Metabody.

What has been done:

  • Ongoing research.
  • Exchange with partners.
  • Paper presentations.
  • Open plenary discussion.
  • Publications.

Results:
Papers at Metabody Conferences:

  • (2013) Flesh of Time: Thinking Time as Materialized Structure, paper presented at the opening conference of the EU-Culture-Project „Metabody. Media Embodiment Tékhne and Bridges of Diversity“, Madrid, Spain.
  • (2014) Dynamic Embodiment: A Non-Anthropocentric Approach, paper presented at the conference: Metabody Forum 4. History and Ontologies of Movement-Gesture, Madrid, Spain.
  • (2015) Vanishing in the Void – Bodies vs. Data, paper presented at the conference: Metabody Unconference: Hacking Big Data Brother: From Biometrics to Intra-action, Madrid, Spain.

Presentations at other Conferences:

  • (2015) Presentation of Metabody Project in plenary discussion together with organizers and partners and presentation: Cinema of Transcendence: The End of the World as we Know it? Paper presented at the conference: From Humanism to Post-and Transhumanism, Ehwa Women’s University, Seoul, South Korea.
  • Publication in Metabody Journal.
    • Conceptual Dimensions of Embodiment. Yvonne Förster. Metabody Journal of Metacultural Critique 1.
    • Vanishing in the Void – Bodies vs. Data. Yvonne Förster.Metabody Journal of Metacultural Critique 2 – Forthcoming.

Software and Embodiment Oxford Brookes University

Federica Frabetti – associated partner – with Reverso and UAM.

Description:
Theoretical-practical research on the relation between software, materiality and cultural practices and discourses.

Purpose and relation with Metabody outcomes:
The study aims at a redefinition of software in the terms proposed by Metabody: as embodied, culturally embedded process. This is a crucial cornerstone for understanding current processes of homogenisation and, redefining information as an embodied process, and fostering diversity through new kinds of technology that relates to bodies and contexts.

What has been done:

  • Preliminary research.
  • Introduced at the Genoa Forum 2014.
  • Practice based research based on the research done by other partners in the project.
  • Papers.
  • Publications.

Results: