PROJECT OUTCOMES

Back to Bodynet-Khorós project

Project Description

(See complete Vision statement here: https://doi.org/10.33182/joph.v3i2.3097 (pages 12-22))

BODYNET-KHORÓS is a transdisciplinary EU Funded project on digital and physical artistic experimentation for reinventing the body, movement and relations towards sustainable and plural ways of living and for restoring the Planet’s Health in the Anthropocene, across the arts, technology, philosophy and the social dimension. The project proposes to address the current global, ecological and social challenges in a unique, original and transversal approach that stresses the underestimated role of the moving body and the need to reinvent it through choral practices: collective movement improvisation techniques, for embodied networks: a Bodynet.

The project takes as starting point the following speculative premise:

The source of the ecological problem as being in unsustainable ways of living and in overpopulation has at its roots a millennia long process of impoverishment of the body’s movement, sensory, creative and expressive capacities. This impoverishment makes us dependent on unsustainable systems of transport, communication, consumption and production. This is the same process that induces rigid normative conceptions sex-gender, class, ability and species that erase social-cultural plurality.

The reply to this unprecedented challenge is in moving and sensing in more varied ways so that we can rely less on unsustainable technical systems and at the same time counteract social homogenisation. A healthy planet needs an as rich as possible biodiversity. Underlying these is the need for a diversification of movements and perceptions that have become atrophied by millennia of alignments with geometric, mechanistic, algorithmic and utilitarian environments.

The aforementioned challenges will be explored along two interrelated strands:

Khorós – Embodied technologies for emergent collectives — collective and embodied improvisation technologies (with educational and training components) through bodily movement and physical body extensions, as rebirth of ancient choral practices.

Bodynet – Broader bandwidth bodies in times of social distance — richer and less reductive digital experiences that reinvent digital interaction and telematics involving the body, movement and multisensory experience in far richer ways than usual.

In ancient Greece the chorus, as groups of dancing and singing bodies in public space, from which the tragedy arose, of primordial importance in Greek culture, was considered, for instance by Plato, a fundamental means of education, a way of educating bodies through movement, whereby movement and the body had a crucial role in culture, a role that we seek to recuperate. It seems that choral practices have been present in nearly every culture, including the origins of Western culture, as in the Greek Khorós. The project thus proposes a revival of some ancient roots of European cultural heritage through the concept of choral practices, while bringing these in convergence with cutting edge approaches to new media, and claiming improvisational practices where disaligned, plastic, varying movements equal open ended and diverse forms of sociality.

Summary of project outcomes

The Bodynet-Khorós project, ended on May 31st 2025 after its 36 months period, has produced 26 events (18 labs and 8 Forums, including 7 conferences), 33 publications, 9 multidisciplinary art productions, 3 exhibitions, a comprehensive toolkit and methodology for choral practices and embodied media for social plurality and planetary health, it has launched the novel field of Metahuman Studies and its associated Metahuman Futures Forum of which the first 5 conference in a series have taken place, and it will continue in coming years through the expanding network of partners and collaborators who are already planning the next collaborative project.

The 7 conferences (5 Metahuman Futures Forums, the 13th BHC and the ¿Mas allá del Humanismo? symposium at UCM) have hosted over 150 onsite and online speakers with world-leading figures in their fields across arts, philosophy and other domains, such as: Stelarc,  John Zerzan, Pierre Jouventin, Émile P. Torres, Francesca Ferrando, Mark Coeckelbergh, Patrica MacCormack, Sophie Gosselin & David G. Bartoli, Yunus Tuncel, Christine Daigle, Agostino Cera, Yvonne Förster, Emma Bigé, Theresa Schubert, Agostino Cera, amongst other.

Participating speakers and artists have been from 24 countries and 5 continents: 10 EU countries (the core partner countries: Spain, France, Greece and Germany and onsite and online participants from Italy, Turkey, Austria, Poland, Romania, Latvia); as well as onsite and online guests from non EU countries, including UK, USA, Canada, China, Korea, Palestine, Israel, Australia, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa and Kenya, thus from another 14 countries.

The Bodynet-Khorós project has developed a new Toolkit (https://metabody.eu/metabody-toolkit/) -based on an older one inherited form a previous EU project, Metabody – comprising:

  • choral movement practices with and without new media,
  • specific software and hardware developed for the movement practices with digital media, including a novel platform for choral telematic online interaction through full body motion using smartphone sensors.
  • a theory toolkit that critically addresses the current ecosocial crisis, the role of the moving body in reply to it, and the importance of choral practices.
  • site specific tools for deep ecological approaches including the study of ecosystems and of eatable plants.

The toolkit has been tested and put in practice in the Labs, ensuring an inclusive approach in collaborating with specific target groups: people with disabilities, refugees, queer communities, rural communities, students and youth, academic and educational environments, art professionals, children and elderly amongst other. Labs have varied from shorter punctual sessions to week-long convivial residencies.

The project has developed extensive theoretical research, with focus on choral practices and their historical importance in human cultures, while critically addressing the current ecosocial crisis, and the role of the moving body in reply to it. This has resulted in over 30 publications with over 2.000 pages, with two special issues in two different online academic journals as well as three monograph books. The full list can be seen here:  https://metabody.eu/bodynet-khoros-publications/.

The project has developed 9 artistic productions with over 30 collaborating artists from Spain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Turkey (from theatre, dance, performance, visual arts, sonic arts, and architecture); and 3 visual art exhibitions with 4 artists from Greece and Spain, with focus on ecological and posthumanistic topics. The productions include interactive systems with digital media as well as nomadic foldable structures for outdoors interventions both of which have been enacted in performances, installations and metaformances in the Labs and Forums, all of which can be seen in the project catalogue: https://metabody.eu/bodynet-khoros-publications/.

The spine of the project has been in its 26 events: 18 Labs and 8 Forums (see https://metabody.eu/bodynet-khoros for a complete list). The labs have focused on internal work on the toolkit with participants while forums have focused on public events and dissemination, though both labs and forums have shared aspects of internal work and public activities. The main methodology developed in the project has been in the week-long convivial residencies where participants experience in holistic form all aspects of the toolkit, while developing a specific collective creative process with and without new media, resulting in site-specific public interventions, as core form of in depth engagement with the proposed techniques. Public artistic presentations have also avoided spectacular formats and proposed immersive, interactive situations for the audience, with focus on designing possibilities for group interactions.

Across the labs and forum a new series of conferences has been promoted with focus on theory but always involving movement practices and smaller workshops: the Metahuman Futures Forum, which has created a novel strand within and beyond the existing intellectual current called posthumanism, proposing specific and unique critical and creative approaches to the ecosocial crisis. Smaller conferences have happened as labs and bigger ones as forums. Altogether 7 conference-type events have been done along with smaller talks-workshops in three different universities (Lesvos, Madrid, and Salamanca), most of them in hybrid, online-onsite format, with over 1.200 online attendees and over 300 on site attendees.

The main outcomes thus include:

  • Toolkit comprising:
    • specific movement techniques with and without new media,
    • software and hardware,
    • theory,
    • methodologies for sitespecific ecological intervention and
    • methodologies for week-long convivial residencies.
  • 33 publications, including 30 theory publications, vision, policy report and catalogue.
  • The 26 events documented in the catalogue.
  • The 9 artistic productions and 3 exhibitions documented in the catalogue.
Results and impacts

The Bodynet-Khorós project has created a unique set of tools and methodologies for addressing the ecological and social crisis of today through the moving body, stressing the importance of choral or collective movement practices for regaining a lost sense of connection, symbiosis and care with others and the environment.

The tools have proposed original and unique approaches both with and without new media. The tools with new media have created highly original forms of embodied telematics: forms of group online connection that involve a rich moving body for an embodied internet or BODYNET, with specific original software developed in the project for easy standalone use of participants using the phones as movement sensors. The tools without new media have resulted in a comprehensive methodology for sustainable and regenerative collective practices with focus on outdoors and ecological relations, claiming the importance of sustainable choral practices for sustainable societies and ecology: KHORÓS.

The tools have been developed, tested and put in practice with a highly varied set of target groups, ensuring the inclusive nature of the tools. Target groups have included people with disabilities, refugees, queer communities, rural communities, students and youth, academic and educational environments, art professionals, children and elderly amongst other. These target groups have benefitted from the variety of tools: from movement practices to the critical theory and ecological practices associated to the former, as sets of transformative knowledges that can be further kept alive and transmitted inside each community beyond the actual events.

The core methodology is in week-long convivial labs or residencies where the tools are put in practice liked to a process of collective creation. The knowledges have been shared across three levels: a core permanent team across the three partners that can keep the knowledges alive, the larger series of participants in the labs that has become acquainted with the techniques in depth and could take them on in their communities, and the more punctual audiences that have got a glimpse of the broader field but could enter it more deeply in future.

The toolkit has already been proposed as starting point for a new EU funding proposal by the core partners plus a new one, enlargening the existing network and keeping it alive, scaling up the tools as tools for knowledge, education, inclusion and deep ecology.

The work has been done in deep collaboration amongst the partners in the mobility activities of the core team and collaborators, and through ongoing online cooperations, ensuring a deep form of transnational cooperation and European dimension.

The Labs and forums have hosted and presented 9 artistic productions and 3 exhibitions, documented in the catalogue. The events have been documented with over 18 galleries containing over 1.100 pictures, and over 49 videos, 14 of them containing multiple talks from the conferences, summing around 4.000 visualizations. Over 20 printed brochures, booklets, poster and flyers have been done, along with over 120 social media posts and 5 appearances in Spanish national and regional press and Greek National TV. Full list here: https://metabody.eu/bodynet-khoros-media .

The results have been disseminated in 33 publications: the vision, the Catalogue, the policy report, and 30 theory publications in prestigious academic journals and other publishers, mainly in English and Spanish, with an outstanding theoretical body of work that ensures an exceptional persistence of the project and its knowledges. Even more importantly the project has launched a new substantial field of study called Metahuman Futures, with its associated platform the Metahuman Futures Forum, that addresses in unprecedented form the ecosocial crisis, where over 200 academics from 5 continents have taken part, and has launched a new intellectual current that will be kept alive, a major sustained outcome of the project with long term impact. Full list of publications here: https://metabody.eu/bodynet-khoros-publications/.

The unique transdiscilinary dimension of the project, visible in its variety of theoretical practical and artistic outputs is in itself a long lasting outcome that is embedded in the methodologies and publications and which claims the importance of practices that are woven across aesthetic, pragmatic, theoretical and activist domains, while shifting the arts towards a prominent, and not merely decorative position in addressing the unprecedented challenges of our era.

Complete Final Report

Choral Practices

The main idea behind the Bodynet-Khorós project was the development of choral practices, i.e., collective artistic practices with focus on the moving-sounding body, with two major strands: with and without digital media (the former involving both online and onsite practices). In this regard the project has developed successful tools, methodologies, practices, and events for both strands.

In relation to online choral practices involving digital media the project has developed and put into practice a variety of successful tools building upon the ones inherited from the previous EU funded project Metabody, for both onsite, online, and in mixed situations. Specific software tools for online choral interactions using digital media have been developed, as detailed in Deliverable 4.1. These tools allow up to 4 remote locations to connect for collective dance practices in which the movement of interactors creates a common virtual world, constituting a unique an unprecedented form of embodied online connection or BODYNET. The tool is a new online version and development based on the on-site interactive software that had been developed in the previous project Metabody. The tool has been developed and put in practice in the Labs and Forums, particularly those happening in Toulouse every year, as can be seen in the documentation in Deliverables 5.1 and 6.1, as well as 7.3 (Catalogue) and 4.2 (description of artistic productions) and here: https://metabody.eu/metabody-toolkit/.

Another online choral technique has been in original forms of life blending of the video images of remote interactors who improvise based on the merging images. All of these tools afford an original and unique approach to telematics and to critical approaches to digitization with focus on a rich moving sounding body as opposed to the prevailing tendency to immobility and control, providing means for a profound rethinking of the digital, and of chorality in the digital era.

In relation to on site choral practices with digital media, new choral site-specific proposals have been done based on the techniques inherited from the Metabody toolkit: a robust system working for nomadic outdoors situations with a variety of potentials, including flexinamic structures, interactive sound and interactive visuals, all three of which can work together or separately.

In relation to on site choral practices not involving digital media a detailed methodology and toolkit has been developed and put in practice in the Labs, based on so called “Disalignment” movement improvisation techniques, as well as “Flexinamic” structures, foldable portable structures which participants enter for collective play outdoors, all of which which have resulted in a variety of outdoors choral interventions, as can also be seen in the documentation in Deliverables 5.1 and 6.1, as well as 7.3 (Catalogue) and 4.2 (description of artistic productions) and here: https://metabody.eu/metabody-toolkit/. These are also offered as scalable outcome and propose a powerful counterbalance to digitization in claiming the importance of embodied practices outside and beyond the digital as the more sustainable ones that need to be claimed, accessible for everyone, everywhere, anytime. This links to the theoretical research on the chorus that will be detailed further below.

Both the above are part of the broader TOOLKIT described below as major sustainability outcome, involving a full set of didactic materials, documentation, tools and methodologies for shared knowledge and scalable practices.

Deepening audience engagement

Both the above are key to another core project scope: developing forms of deepening audience engagement and its associated qualitative monitoring. The main tool for this have been the 18 labs where over 400 people have participated in in-depth sessions experiencing in holistic manner the project’s toolkit of theory and practices sometimes with more focus on one or the other. The labs have afforded sometimes one day, sometimes week-long workshops where a process of engagement of participants could be built up both individually and collectively, exploring aesthetic formatS beyond the spectacular, where all participants actively co-create the entire situation, with and without digital media. This format we call metaformance (as proposed by Del Val since 2012), and is also the basis for offering immersive experiences to audiences coming to public  events. This is the second major aspect of deep audience engagement in relation to which new choral dimensions of collective interaction have been crucially put into practice beyond the preexisting ones stemming from the previous project.

Qualitative monitoring

Qualitative monitoring has put emphasis on examining this mode of in depth collective interaction has been addressed both internally by continually analizing the interactions and the recordings made of these, especially by Jaime del Val and Jean-Marc Matos, and through specific questionnaires and interviews, which have resulted in a forthcoming publication by collaborator Rubén Lopez Cano and associated Partner Alicia Peñalba, entitled: “Bodynet-Khorós. Transformación social por medio del cuerpo en movimiento” (Bodynet-Khorós: social transformation through the moving body) which analysis and collects the results of questionnaires done in different sessions responding to questions. The conclusions have been that the choral movement techniques of the project afford an in depth transformative tool for openended form of collectivity and immersive co-creation.

Other longer questionnaires have been done, proposed by the coordinator to the core team of ongoing participants and collaborators in order to evaluate the project, its tolls and collaborative process, aiming to ensure a horizontal process of cooperation while analysing the progress, challeges and issues to improve. The feedbacks affirm that successful forms of interaction have been put in practice both for addressing the theoretical challenges and, particularly in relation to the movement practices, as well as the broader collaboration process.

 

Target Groups

The above mentioned choral practices with and without new media have been the major tool for working with Target Groups, as forms of in-depth audience engagement.

Target groups have been successfully addressed, beyond the expected, mainly through the labs and secondarily through the forums. Here follows a quantitative and qualitative evaluation:

  • People with disabilities: 4 sessions with three different institutions in three different venues in Madrid, led by Reverso in 2023 and 2025, with a total of 8 groups of 10-15 each: over 100 participants. This has happened through the associated partner Plena Inclusion, who put Reverso in touch with the three institutions involved. Sessions were very successful and long term collaborations are being studied with one of the institutions. The project has proposed a unique approach to disabilities which, linked to extensive research in previous phases creates openended environments where neurodiverse and somatodiverse people can create for themselves a world of relations not based upon preexisting rules.
  • Rural populations: 3 forums involving over 600 general audience with emphasis on senior population, women, and children, in Rural Salamanca, led by Reverso in 2022, 2023 and 2024. This has happened through the permanent space of Reverso in the rural area, with impact in regional and national press. Another lab also took place in an an ecovillage in Almería though focused on the international community of that ecovillage and its natural ecosystems, while establishing collaborations with local environmental NGO’s that will be further pursued in a future project. In the project Reverso has launched the activity of its permanent space in the rural area creating a permanent hub, while project activities have been programmed along with the village festivities enhancing interaction with local populations.
  • Refugees: 1 lab involving 40 refugees in Lesvos, was led by Reverso and K. Danse in Lesvos 2024. In spite of the initial difficulties of involving this target group due to the changing and complex situation in Lesvos a very successful lab was finally done in 2024 in collaboration with the refugee organization Rad Music International.
  • Queer community: 4 labs in Lesvos involving over 60 participants have been led by Reverso, in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. An ongoing collaboration has been established through Reverso and UAegean in the project with the queer community in Lesvos, in particular via Ohana collective in Skala Eressou, offering one lab per year for the community.
  • Students, youth, educational environment: 7 conferences and talks in university environments, led by Reverso and UAegean, with over 300 on site and over 1.200 online active participants, including also student’s exhibitions. The University of the Aegean has been a major node for involving the student and educational community, but also the associated partners Complutense University of Madrid, and University of Salamanca, as well as the collaborator from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Joaquín fernández-Mateo, for online participation, the associated partners from Canadian and Colombian Universities, and collaborators from Argentinian, Brazilian, Colombian, and Mexican universities.
  • General audience: see above on rural environment, as well as audience coming to the public activities in Toulouse, Dresden and Lesvos, with over 200 people more.
  • Groups beyond the ones initially proposed:
    • Art professionals: 8 events in Toulouse and Dresden, through K.Danse and TMA, involving over over 50 young art, theater, dance and performance professionals. Building upon previous collaborations every year professionals from the arts have been engaged in the in depth week-long residencies done in the events in Toulouse.
    • Academic milieu: see above on educational environment. The Metahuman Futures Forum and associated publications in the project have opened up a significant new space and thinktank within and beyond the existing one of critical posthumanism.
    • Children: specific labs by UAegean, through Maria Asimakopoilou were done in 2023 with over 20 children.
    • Natural ecosystems, animal sanctuaries, ecovillages and environmental NGO’s have been also a new “target group” that will be taken further in a forthcoming project in addressing the ecological crisis through regenerative art practices.

In total over 1.300 on site and over 2.000 online participants of target groups have benefited from the project activities.

Participation has had three levels:

  1. core team, composed of participants from all the partners and close collaborators, meeting every year physically for in-depth work in rural Salamanca, these have included the leads from each partners, plus 6 German, 3 French, 8 Greek, 3 Spanish, 1 Italian and 1 Turkish collaborator;
  2. participants in labs and conferences onsite and online, some of them repeating in different events;
  3. broader audience attending public events onsite and online.

 

Inclusion, sustainability and digital shift

Inclusion, sustainability, and digital shift have been addressed not only in the thematics of the theory and the topics of artworks (for instance those focusing on symbiosis or denouncing mass extinctions of life) but also in the fact of developing original and unique inclusive and participatory tools and labs, with and without new media, together with the diverse minorities involved. Besides this a vegan food policy has been established for the project, since according to the research done in the project itself, and visible in the publications, food of animal origin, besides causing immense harms to nonhumans is the major source of the ecological crisis and causes severe harms to human health as well. Besides this, travelling has been minimised avoiding touring for short activities and focusing on longer ones, focusing on sustainable means using train whenever possible, for instance between Madrid and Toulouse, and with a significant final experiment on sustainable mobility for the final activity using a sailboat offered by a collaborator for the trip between Athens and Lesvos for the three coorganisers coming from abroad. Online media have also been used carefully attending to their energetic unsustainability while proposing specific critical and creative approaches around them.

 

Theoretical Research and publications (WPs 3 and 7)

A main strand of research has been on the concept and practice of the chorus itself, particularly in its ancient Greek conception, while claiming the importance of choral dances as central to human societies since the Paleolithic, a centrality that has however got problematically lost. The core of this research done by coordinator Jaime del Val, is published in the 85 pages long chapter on Choral Ontopolitics in one of the project publications, pages 339-424:

Other strands of the research and its associated publications have focused on a variety of critical approaches to the current eco-social crisis, both by Jaime del Val, by UAegean researchers and other collaborators, widening the field of research stemming from the previous project Metabody and involving topics such as:

  1. The Age of extinctions and algorithms: existential challenges
    • The food industry as core neglected factor of the extinction crisis
    • Metahumanist politics for systemic change, and the role of the moving body in it.
  2. Aesthetics
    • undoing the spectacular divide and challenging control aesthetics
    • metaformance and metahumanist aesthetics
  3. Movement philosophy
    • Embodied cognition and Kinaesthetic plasticity
      • Kinaesthetic plasticity and brain plasticity
      • Kinaesthetic plasticity and social diversity
      • Kinaesthetic plasticity and ecological sustainability
    • Movement philosophy and ecology
    • Metahumanist philosophy

The research has been, not only disseminated in conferences, but shared as didactic material in the labs and online, constituting a core part of the new Toolkit.

Outcomes can be seen in the long list of publications (Deliverable 7.2 – https://metabody.eu/bodynet-khoros-publications/), which set forth the scenario for future continuations with deeper focus on the ecosocial crisis, taking further the role of arts and the moving body in response to it.

The research has been disseminated in a novel series of conferences launched by the project, entitled “Metahuman Futures Forum” of which 5 main iterations have happened (smaller ones associated to lab events, bigger ones associated to forum events). They have been significant in proposing a more daring critical and creative alternative to the existing intellectual current called posthumanism, and in strong opposition to transhumanism. The diverse associated publications that have been done in those fields (D 7.2) have outlined the project as unique and strong contributor and thinktank for addressing the ecosocial crisis.

The conferences have been mostly in hybrid format online/onsite, resulting in onver 100 talks available online, with over 1.200 online attendees and over 300 onsite attendees, and have hosted over 150 onsite and online speakers with world-leading figures in their fields across arts, philosophy and other domains, such as: Stelarc,  John Zerzan, Pierre Jouventin, Émile P. Torres, Francesca Ferrando, Mark Coeckelbergh, Patrica MacCormack, Sophie Gosselin & David G. Bartoli, Yunus Tuncel, Christine Daigle, Agostino Cera, Yvonne Förster, Emma Bigé, Theresa Schubert, Agostino Cera, amongst other.

Participating speakers and artists have been from 24 countries and 5 continents: 10 EU countries (the core partner countries: Spain, France, Greece and Germany and onsite and online participants from Italy, Turkey, Austria, Poland, Romania, Latvia); as well as onsite and online guests from non EU countries, including UK, USA, Canada, China, Korea, Palestine, Israel, Australia, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa and Kenya, thus from another 14 countries.

Theory Publications have by far exceeded expectations counting over 30 not including forthcoming ones and besides the Vision Statement, Catalogue and Policy Report, including two special issues in prestigious academic journals, three book monographs, all of them open access and available online, mainly in English and Spanish. A brief Policy report has also been done that will be taken further in a planned future project continuation, outlining the importance of choral practices for education, media policy, inclusion and other domains.

The 7 conferences:

Other related activities:

EVENTS in 2024:

Artistic and Technical Productions (WP 4)

The project has developed 9 artistic productions with over 30 collaborating artists from Spain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Turkey (from theatre, dance, performance, visual arts, sonic arts, and architecture); and 3 visual art exhibitions with 4 artists from Greece and Spain, with focus on ecological and posthumanistic topics. The productions include interactive systems with digital media as well as nomadic foldable structures for outdoors interventions both of which have been enacted in performances, installations and metaformances in the Labs and Forums, all of which can be seen in the project catalogue: https://metabody.eu/bodynet-khoros-publications/.

Productions have focused on the interactive tools and environments to be used in the labs and their associated public presentations, as tools for cocreation. They involve interactive video or 3D visuals, life electroacoustics, architectural elements, and of course, the dance or performance of the moving body, with site-specific interventions, often outdoors or even nomadically. Each of them is done collectively, as choral process and intervention, developing each time a unique choral event. This is a core cocreation methdology of the project that blends creative action with capacity building and the learning of the techniques and theories in a holistic approach. This demands an ongoing preliminary preparation of both software and hardware tools, flexinamic structures for site-specific interventions, and movement techniques, as well as study of site-specific spaces, which during the project gradually included more outdoors activities and in relation to natural environments.

Technical production is specified in D 4.1 – https://metabody.eu/metabody-toolkit/. The software development for the Metabody Toolkit allows online interaction involving the moving body for collectively creating 3D and soundscapes, through a standalone applications easy to install, along with completely online applications – https://app.no-art.app/meta/accelerometer/simple/ –  thus setting the stage for a further upscaling of the proposal, beyond the initial scope of this project.

The main software produced is an easy-to install standalone application that allows to locally reproduce immersive 3D visuals and sound environments created through the mix of local and remote movement data coming from smartphone sensors worn on the body through particular hardware, using an online app created for the project to which phones can easily connect for sending data. This allows to collectively and telematically create virtual worlds through body movement, these “virtual worlds” are called Abstract Avatars and propose a novel approach to interaction design (as proposed by Del Val 2025, p.458-463) which exceeds control aesthetics and searched to enhance the sense of indetermiacy, variation and symbiosis. A preliminary VR application of this project has also been tested in the final stages of the project and a full VR and online app version is being planned for future phases. Another piece of software, in this case adapted from previous ones using OBS, has been developed for a different form on telematic choral interaction based on the life mixing of images of several remote performers. All of these can be seen here: https://metabody.eu/metabody-toolkit/.

Artistic productions are specified in D 4.2 exposing the diverse iterations of sitespecific uses of the initially proposed Metabody/metatopia environmants composed of flexinamic structures that get adapted to each new space, and portable projection and sound systems.

Besides this other art projects have been tested in labs such as Katharina Gross’s Virtual Choir, or K. Danse’s RCO, Immortelles, F-AI-LLE, and Focale Z with longer try outs around the “RCO” project (https://www.k-danse.net/en/portfolio/rco/), and the “Focal-Z” project (https://www.k-danse.net/en/portfolio/ada-arteina/) working on the theme of the disappearance of the body and its “recovery,” using interactive visual and generative musical processing (with AI).

Besides this every year students of the University of the Aegean have been producing exhibitions, presented in the university foyer along with the forums or conferences held addressing topics like the posthuman and the ecological crisis the catalogues of the three exhibitions can be seen here: 2023 –  2024-1 –  2024-1 – 2025.

 

Toolkit and methodologies

As major sustainability outcome of the Bodynet-Khorós project, a toolkit has been produced involving a full set of didactic materials, documentation, tools and methodologies for shared knowledge and scalable practices. The Metabody tools and techniques that were the starting point for this project have been scaled up and developed significantly further.

They Toolkit comprises the following:

  1. Theory toolkit of shareable knowledges, including dialogical tools and publications on the ecosocial crisis and the moving body.
  2. Choral movement techniques with and without new media.
    1. including actual software and hardware (D 4.1).
  3. Ecological tools for knowledge of environments, eatable plants, outdoors living, and systemic change towards sustainable lives.
  4. Convivial labs as core methodology for activating the knowledges.

all of it shared both in labs and forums  and through written and video materials published online, as didactical materials condensing the knowledges, as building blocks for a transversal curriculum.

The detailed description of the toolkit can be accessed and downloaded here https://metabody.eu/metabody-toolkit/.

 

Labs and Forums (WPs 5 & 6)

Labs have been of different kinds:

  • The main format has been week long residences where participants explore all aspects of the mentioned toolkit in holistic form, though mostly focusing on some aspects, particularly the ones in Toulouse, as capacity building for artists, and the in-depth gathering of the core team every year in Zorita de la Frontera, in rural Salamanca.
  • Occasionally shorter labs condensing the different aspects into a single session of 2-4 hours have been done, especially for people with disabilities, queer community, refugee community, and some shorter microworkshops in academic environments in the university of Salamanca, Madrid and in Lesvos.

Besides this, several conference-type events have happened: some smaller, as labs, and some larger, as forums, mostly under the new brand of the “Metahuman Futures Forum”.

Both labs and forums have mostly included public activities for general audience beyond the direct participants of the target groups. The difference between labs and forum in that forums tend to involve either more public activities or larger conference formats while labs tend to focus more on local open calls of direct engagement of target groups through the network of collaborating organizations.

Labs have also implied local Hubs of more or less stable networks or constellations of collaborators sharing and disseminating the knowledges.

Week-long residencies following open calls has been the core methodology where all the projects techniques get enacted, transmitted, shared and cocreated with specific groups and communities in specific environments and ecosystems, both built and natural, rural and urban. During the week participants don’t only learn the techniques but participate in their further elaboration and tuning while creating a powerful collective synergy, becoming a “chorus”, as a co-creation activity that results in performative site-specific interventions which we call metaformances. Participants can connect this to their own specific proposals and projects in theory and practice. These labs usually end with open doors or public presentations where broader audiences get involved in the immersive site-specific processes or outdoors choral interventions that have been elaborated by the group, while communicating the project results.

The labs and forums in Zorita have focused on internal work of the core team and public activities in the rural space. The labs in Madrid have focused on disabilities at three different institutions and on theory activities with the Complutense university. The lab in Almeria shared the toolkit of knwledges at the international community of an Ecovillage. The Labs and forums in Toulouse concentrated on week long residences unfolding the toolkit of practices with local artists and with public presentations, most of them online with other countries (Greece, Italy, Spain, Turkey) and one of them including Dresden in Germany where also an open physical activity was taking place. The labs and forums in Lesvos  have focused on one hand in Mytilene on the theory conferences at the university, always involving exhibitions, smaller workshops and the activity with refugees, and on the other in Skala Eressou, at the other end of the island, hosted by Ohana collective from the queer community, where open air labs have been done as well as collaborations with the animal sanctuary, with increasing focus on ethnobotanics and ecology, culminating in the final lab where the three coorganisers from abroad reached the island by sailboat as experiment in sustainable travelling and dwelling. The week long labs, especially in Zorita, Toulouse and Lesvos, have been powerful transformative processes of collective exploration of the techniques developing a choral dynamics, as well as of conviviality.

During the three years a powerful process has been unleashed as proposed: first laying the grounds testing out the techniques, then fully putting them in practice, finally evaluating, improving and taking conclusions for a next phase, that will have more focus on open air and deep ecology approaches. As can be seen in responses to questionnaires sent out by the coordinator, the process has implied deep personal growth for many participants in the core team, as the project critically and creatively challenges many profound assumptions that underlie the current ecosocial crisis but seldom get questioned. Along the way new alliances have come up widening the constellation of collaborators, which is already looking into the next phase with a new project proposal, and who will meanwhile keep the practices active, with still pending publications, workshops, and documentation to be done.