The DAP-lab's research program from 2013 to 2016 has been supported by the EU Culture Programme as part of the collaborative trans-european METABODY research project: Media Embodiment Tekhne & Bridges of Diversity. DAP-Lab is one of the co-organizers of the Metabody Project and has started to work with new partners in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands on the creation of new prototype performance designs.

Visit DAP-Lab's METABODY pages depicting project phases (2013-2018)

See documentary film on the new METABODY project, edited by STEIM, December 2014

See documentary film of the premiere of Metakimosphere no.1 on March 31, 2015

METABODY: MEDIA EMBODIMENT TEKHNE & BRIDGES OF DIVERSITY is a 3-5 year project that started in July 2013, with the support of the European Commission and the participation of 28 partners from 14 countries, coordinated by Asociación Transdiscplinar Reverso.

METABODY will elaborate a critique of the unsustainable tendencies of cultural homogenisation of Information Society and develop new communication technologies that highlight the embodied differences in expression and communication, developing interactive multisensorial laboratories of perception and movement integrated in a mobile experimental interactive/intra-active architectural structure and embodied social network for performances, installations, workshops, seminars, residencies and continuous research, that will eventually tour throughout 9 european cities.

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participants in Metabody residency in Madrid, 2014 // Johannes Birringer & Michèle Danjoux showing prototype design at Metabody / CYNETarts 2013 in Dresden

The project will undertake a critical study of contemporary aesthetics of control, in which quantification of all activities via reduction to information patterns permeates all areas of life, subduing it increasingly to a regime of control while being presented as a desirable condition.

At the same time Metabody will develop new technological paradigms that take into account the changing differences of bodies, contexts and movements in their irreducibility, valuing and highlighting the importance of unpredictability for a livable life and generating the conditions for a sustainable social ecology.

Research Objevtive

METABODY addresses the importance of non verbal communication and embodied expressions for cultural diversity as a fundamental form of cultural heritage that is not adecuately taken into consideration, and which is being undermined by current information technologies, which induce unprecedented forms of homogenisation of non verbal expressions while subjecting people to an increasing control, thus undermining fundamental freedoms.

93% of our expressions are in the form of non verbal communication, yet current media reduce non verbal interactions to a highly reduced set of standardized and traceable gestures of interaction through interfaces. This is inducing an unprecedented empoverishment of cultural expressions at global scale and undermining diversity and civil rights while expanding the possibilities for ubiquitous and invisible surveillance worldwide.

The project seeks to address this problem, elaborate a critique and propose alternatives through the production of new kind of media that highlight the diversity of embodied expressions, bodies and contexts, foregrounding cultural diversity. New multidisciplinary or transdiciplinary communication platforms will be developed in the convergence of the arts (dance, music, architecture and visual arts), and social minorities with the mediation of technosciences and humanities.

METABODY will develop technologies, tools, techniques and devices that will be integrated in the first fully interactive architecture that will be built in the 4th year touring throughout Europe in the 5th year as an observatory of diversity and a laboratory of difference that will seek to open perceptions, relations, movements and behaviors up to indeterminacy, for a social ecology to come.
METABODY seeks to develop radically embodied technologies that take into account irreducible and changing differences of embodiments, bodies and contexts, for new expressive, kinetic, relational, comunicational and socio-cultural paradigms, while addressing the problems inherent to contemporary disembodiment culture of prediction and control.

METABODY counterposes the technologies of control and quantification (quantified self/smart self technologies) by claiming a qualitatively changing, unquantifiable body whose potentials cannot be predicted, pointing to an ecology of indeterminacy where creativity opens up a differential field of plurality.

METABODY is an unprecedented convergence of architecture and spatial arts, performance, dance and body arts, sound arts, visual and media arts, kinetics, philosophy, cognitive sciences, theories and histories of affects and emotions, alternative mathematics, (post-)queer, postcolonial and disability theories, embodiment theories and social activism; generating a new metadiscisciplinary field and network of nomadic modules of practice-theory: MetamediaLab & Metahuman Metaformance Studies.

FOR KEY ASPECTS OF OUR RESEARCH, GO HERE

research structure

PARTNERS
38 partners from 16 countries
Coordinator
Spain - Asociación Transdisciplinar REVERSO - Jaime del Val

Co-organisers
Italy - Infomus -Universitá di Genova - Antonio Camurri
Germany - Trans-Media-Akademie – HellerauThomas Dumke
UK - DAP_Lab – Brunel University - Johannes Birringer
France - K-Danse - Jean Marc Matos
Netherlands - STEIM - Marije Baalman
Portugal - Fabrica de Movimentos - Alberto Magno
Germany - Palindrome - Robert Wechsler
Spain - Universidad Autónoma de Madrid - Eva Botella-Ordinas & José Luis carles
Spain - Instituto STOCOS - Pablo Palacio & Muriel Romero
Netherlands - Hyperbody Research group - Dr. Nimish Biloria
Germany - IMM Group - Bernd Schaedlich

Associated Partners:
Denmark - CAVI – Aarhus University - Jonas Fritsch
Czech Republic - New Technologies Research Centre - Jan Romportl
France - IRCAM - Andrew Gerzso
Switzerland -  ICST - Daniel Bisig
Netherlands -  dtr_lab - Dieter Vandoren
UK - Goldsmith’s University - Luciana Parisi
UK - Oxford Brookes University - Federica Frabetti
UK -De Montfort Universty Leicester School of Media and Communication – Beatriz Pichel
Germany - Leuphana Universität - Yvonne Foerster-Beuthan
Spain - Medialab Prado - Marcos García
Spain -  ESMUC  - Rubén López Cano
Spain -  Fundación Música Abierta  - Rosa Iglesias
Spain - Universidad de Valladolid - Alicia Peñalba
Spain - Seminario Nietzsche Complutense (SNC)- Facultad de Filosofía (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) – Mariano Rodriguez y Oscar Quejido
Turkey -  Amber Platform  - Ekmel Ertan
Canada - SenseLab - Concordia U. - Erin Manning&Brian Massumi
USA - Duke University - Literature Programme – N. Katherine Hayles
USA -Duke University - Dance Programme – Thomas F. DeFrantz
USA - UC Berkeley  - Lisa Wymore
USA - UC Santa Cruz - Elizabeth Stephens – Art Department
USA - NYIT – New York Institute of Technology - Kevin LaGrandeur
Colombia - Facultad de Artes ASAB - Adrián Gómez
Chile - INTERFACE – Arte, Cuerpo, Ciencia y Tecnología - Brisa MP
Chile - FIDET - Sergio Valenzuela
Chile - Moodlab - Fernando Ocampo
Korea - Myongji University - Ralph Beuthan

Advisory Board:

Donna Haraway, Katherine Hayles, Allucquére Rosanne Stone, Karen Barad, Stelarc, Brian Massumi, Erin Manning, Annie Sprinkle, Elizabeth Stephens, Luciana Parisi, Federica Frabetti, Liana Borghi, Harmony Bench, Claudia Giannetti, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Francesca Ferrando, Yunus Tuncel, Evi Sampanikou, Marlon Barrios Solano.

Design And Performance Lab