30 July 2016 | 10:00

International Metabody Forum Berlin 2016 Workshop - Performing Sensory Cartographies

Performing Sensory Cartographies Workshop by Jonathan Reus and Sissel Marie Tonn

The focus of the workshop is on the "inner movement" of the body, flows which function autonomically just outside the direct reach of conscious agency. While we are not directly in control of such movements, they are nonetheless in a constant conversation with the surrounding environment and with the physiological life of the body material. To detect & aestheticize these flows we will use worn biometric sensors & sound synthesizers.

Participants will spend 1 day creating body extensions which renegotiate relationships between the senses & environment, in order to further activate these flows and relationships. The workshop will culminate in the creation of a site-specific sonic-sculptural performance, where the authorship of the compositional process is not singular, but somewhere in between where our biology meets the environment. 

  • Cost: 50€ 
  • Registration is mandatory, please send an email to movlabberlin@gmail.com with METABODY in the subject line

Workshop details

  •  Unpacking & discussing some of the ideas we're playing with. In particular, we'll consider "sensory cartography" as a means for exploring the non-conscious co-authorship of music through inner movement & attuned sensitivities to the body and environment. We will also consider the idea of "metasensation", how awareness changes & forms feedback cycles when the act of sensation is aestheticized and interpreted through technological instrumentation.
  • A brief exploration of the technologies we are using, wearable biometric sensors and worn sound synthesizers.
  • The core of the workshop will be spent hands-on, constructing new relationships between sensation & environment by constructing body extensions & sound resonators/projectors (participants are encouraged to bring their own materials in addition to what is provided)  
  • Developing a site specific performance/sonic-body architecture
  • Documentation of the performance

Links + inspiration:

Artist websites:

Related Links:

METABODY is a European project coordinated by Transdisciplinary Association Reverso that questions the homogenisation of expressions induced by current information and control technologies, which place unprecedented threats to plurality and to fundamental rights and freedoms by reducing all our actions to predictable behaviours, and proposes to reinvent them highlighting the role and diversity of embodied expression through a new concept of interactive architecture that transforms in all its physical and digital aspects, constituting dynamic, participatory and performative environments for outdoors and indoors, an emergent and indeterminate space, a METATOPIA.

The INTERNATIONAL METABODY FORUM is the platform of the Metabody project, a space of creation, meeting, exchange, research, education, dissemination and awareness generation, that takes place every year in multiple countries proposing a novel transdisciplinary format across the arts, technosciences, humanities and the social. The forum fuses with the reSense.mov festival and the MovLab community based at SPEKTRUM. Throughout the week there will be workshops and performances, with a conference taking place on the last day of the festival, Sunday 31st of July.