METABODY is a European project, Forum and Institute coordinated by Jaime del Val the non-profit organization Reverso, that since 2013 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 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.[Read +]

The project undertakes 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 develops 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.

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 are developed in the convergence of the arts (dance, music, architecture and visual arts), and social minorities with the mediation of technosciences and humanities.

METABODY develops 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.

What:
How:
Who:
What makes the difference?
What new technologies will the project produce?
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KEY ASPECTS

METANETS

New radically embodied social networks involving multisensory non verbal communication.read+

metafaces_thumb

New technologies of non verbal Communication.
Exceeding word and image, including gesture…read+

Metamover

Disabilities and inclusion – Culture without Frontiers
New expressive technologies for people with disabilities…read+

metagaming_thumb

Beyond video Games.
How to bring back to gaming the full spectrum of corporeality that has been…read+

Metarts

New transdisciplinary platform for the arts, creativity, education, leisure and culture. read+

Metaspace

Architecture of the future – intelligent architecture – New forms of physically and digitally interactive space.read+

Metalab

Observatory of social sustainability and cultural diversity.
Observatory of…read+

Metaculture

The project outlines our non verbal interactions as fundamental heritage, one that doesn’t have to be…read+

RESULTS

A SUSTAINED
PLATFORM
AND NETWORK

A sustained platform and network and…read +

IMF
INTERNATIONAL
METABODY
FORUM

MetaMedialab – Research workshops, Artistic…read +

METASPACE
METABODY
PAVILLION

Mobile metamedia laboratory-installation…
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Bodynet

The building of an experimental, radically…read +

ACADEMIC
RESEARCH

Including Publications and documentation in books…read +

Metafaces

Devices, techniques and tools, Technology …
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