The Body as Interface: Workshop

This project explores space perception, body movement, choreography, and performative interactions mediated through sound and how this relates to our affective experience and emotional conditions.

Led by Ava Fatah gen Schieck, it brings together an interdisciplinary team of academics, architects, artists and dance technologists from the Bartlett UK, ESA (Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture), Châlons sur Saone France, the Place Dance School and  the Slade School of Fine Art UK. The activities of the team focuses on multi-disciplinary collaboration and has developed a series of an interdisciplinary workshops with participants from the research team, the dance school and MSc Adaptive Architecture & Computation students.

The project was funded by the EPSRC Platform Grant ‘Space Technologies and the Design of the Built Environment’ (EP/G02619X/1)

Ava Fatah gen Schieck
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Christian Delécluse
ESA, Paris

Armando Menicacci
Châlons sur Saone

Katja Nyqvist
Roehampton University

Prarthana Jagannath
Aedas 

The workshop explores the relationship between space perception and the body. The aim is to achieve a deeper understanding of the physiological and psychological processes that are involved in the construction of perception by investigating how it relates to the body and body movement and to recognise the importance body movement as a medium to design the quality of experience in particularly in interacting and engaging through technology.

The workshop intends to reveal unconscious processes that may have an impact on the way an individual perceives her/his space and seeks to highlight the importance of understanding spatial relations in terms of relations between individuals (proximics).

Our approach covers both the theoretical aspects (related to, for instance, visual perception, cognitive science, Laban space theory) and the practical aspects (related to space orientation / gravity organisation) through physical adapted exercises led by dance practitioners. This is reinforced through the implementation of a practical experiment. The aim is to reveal how people relate to their own space (and how they relate to their own kinesphere). By the end of the workshop participants will be more aware of the specificity of their own relation to space, and how their body is linked to it.

The workshop will include:

  • Theory and practice
  • Physically exploring the fundamentals of space and space perception
  • Development and enhancement of analytical skills
  • Group discussions
  • Creative work: the students will be asked to produce a group work (installation/performance) based on the data collected from experiencing (and testing) the installation by the workshop participants (including the students themselves).