Barker, Ned; Burd, Joana; Peng, Friendred; Janowicz, Magdalena; (2023) Our Hybrid Bodies: A Sociological Experimental Film. Presented at: The 11th International Conference on Multimodality (ICOM-11), London, UK.

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Abstract

Our Hybrid Bodies, is a short Sociological Experimental Film that consolidates conceptual and critical developments across three experimental collaborations between a sociologist, artists, and our scientific partners (roboticists, biologists, and chemical engineers). Sociological Experimental Filmmaking is a mode of inviting audiences to engage with possible social and sensorial futures. This novel audio-visual approach has been develop as a way to turn social science insights from experimental collaborations with artists (see Martínez 2021) into an engaging audio-visual research output. The approach contributes tosensory futures ethnography (Pink 2023) and more-than-representational ethnographic films that seek to be affective/sensuous and resonate with audiences evoking rather than reporting (see Vannini 2015). Through blending ethnographic and artistic practices, we explored current and future ‘hybrid bodies’ – becoming immersed in scientific fields (e.g., biomimetics, biohybrid robotics and synthetic biology). Three distinct but complimentary critical concepts emerged that cut across our collaborative projects and our disciplinary interests. Broadly these were hybrid: (1) life (with Burd); (2) breath (with Janowitz); and (3) movement (with Peng). These art-sociology collaborations have led to the co-creation of immersive installations, interactive sculptures, and performances that seek to interact with audiences’ bodies and senses directly. Sociological Experimental Filmmaking refers to a secondary process of reflecting on concepts, themes, and questions generated through experimental collaborations – turning these into an audio-visual piece that brings critical attention to sociosensorial implications for future societies and the bodies that inhabit them. Our Hybrid Bodies is not a documentary of the collaborative projects, nor does it place co-produced artworks into film, rather it intimately follows the complimentary critical concepts (hybrid life, breath, and movement). It places these future bodies within social worlds.

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