This research axis brings together research-creation projects that explore the associations between the body, technology and the social sciences within contemporary culture and the media of everyday life (Munster 2009, Massumi 2006, Varela 1991, Manning 2009). Exploring the unavoidable relationship between technology and the “moving-thinking-feeling” body—both human and otherwise (Stern 2013), within this axis, the following three themes have been identified:

Performativity and Enactment;
Temporality, Dynamics and Process;
Perception, Affection and Sensation;

Researchers predominantly identified with the first theme explore how performative practices span different epistemic cultures (Knorr-Cetina 1999) from performative practices in laboratory science working with biological matter such as human, plant and animal tissues to technological arrangements that involve participants directly interacting with aware environments.

Here performance acts as a “boundary object” linking the arts, technology and humanities with the social and natural sciences (Diebner 2006, Latour 1987, Pickering 1995). Researchers predominantly associated with the second theme investigate how technical systems are temporally organized, sequenced and set into motion in and over time as are the resulting “vitality forms” (Stern 2010) that are created in perceivers as a result. Finally, researchers mainly engaged with the third theme explore how multi-modal sense impressions extend our senses into the world (McLuhan 1964).