Enactive research : transversal possibilities for expanding the imaging of science

This paper explores the notion of the expanded image as a transdisciplinary interaction between people and environments. In support of this proposition, images and imaging will be discussed through a series of transformative steps: from the diagram to the biogram and from the biogram to biotopology. Two research projects, exemplary of a transdisciplinary approach, inform the move to biotopology (the continuous surface of interactions tied to imaging practices): first, theories of enaction in cognitive science foreground co-selective processes and the precariousness of self- organizing systems and supply new ways of imaging body-environment relationships (Stewart et al 2010; Thompson 2007; and Varela et al 1993); and second, the procedural architecture of artist- turned-architects Arakawa and Gins foregrounds the reconfigurability of the co-selective process that becomes an enactive practice. These approaches suggest that if the image were expanded to include the intersection of the human organism’s behaviors, artifacts (such as images) and built- environments, then the ‘person’ whose myriad surfaces flicker towards future action, might become the best description of an expanded form of imaging, always in process and flickering towards future action. The many and non-locatable surfaces of person would defy disciplinary boundaries and interfere with habitual patterns of imaging. Ultimately, the aim of expanding imaging practices is to expand an embodied capacity to configure and reconfigure conceptual and material realms.

The invisible hand: transversal thinking with new materialism in curriculum design

This proposal invites participation in a design intensive, in which educators bring along an idea for a unit, seminar, lecture, lesson as the basis for a practical and creative workshop merging conceptual art, writing, poetry and curriculum planning, while engaging playfully with New Materialism. In this work we seek to move beyond merely interrogating designs for future subjects, and to embolden our thinking about curriculum, asking questions to explore how the pedagogical imagination works with both the material and immaterial, the corporeal and incorporeal, within ecologies continually transforming in the process of making. Through this, we explore ways to challenge “delivery”, or “conduit” metaphors of education, to see design as “situated” in new ways involving both human and nonhuman elements, resisting stasis, resisting closure. This workshop positions curriculum design in the realm of the artist/activist, rather than that of the bureaucrat/technician and opens up a space for reflection on the processes of making curriculum. The workshop also therefore seeks to question how knowledge around curriculum is produced, and to document the ways in which our work as educators is part of a continuous becoming, as we ourselves, and our designs, co-emerge. We remember that curriculum design is fundamentally a creative project, always taking form and transforming in relation to what surrounds us, rather residing in documents, which tend to conceal the entanglements around their making. Instead, we embody and live curriculum; it is happening now