Bodies Moving and Being Moved: Mapping affect in Christian Nold's Bio Mapping
- Submitting institution
-
Manchester Metropolitan University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 154353
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
-
10.3366/soma.2014.0115
- Title of journal
- Somatechnics
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 108
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 2044-0138
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- February
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
-
https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/605191/
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
B - Art & Performance
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This is a peer-reviewed article in Somatechnics, a multi-disciplinary journal (EUP Press) dealing with the body and its involvement with the world through technology. Its significance and innovation lie in its application of affect theory to the artist Christian Nold's Bio Mapping (2004-2008) series, a dialogue between theory and practice that leads to new arguments about both. Bio Mapping was a series of participatory projects in which GPS traces of movement were combined with GSR (galvanic skin response) traces of arousal, often taken as indexes of emotional response. The research presents Nold’s work as an early instance of an emerging regime where technological tracking is taken for granted, even extending to intimate states. Through a close analysis of the process and visual elements of maps, it explores the implications of blending these different bodily traces, and the relationship between the individuals traced and social collectives. The article uses Nold’s work to think critically about affect and emotion as interdisciplinary topics dealt with across the sciences and humanities, focusing on the Deleuzian/Spinozan strand of affect theory developed by the philosopher Brian Massumi. It follows the implications of Deleuze’s cartographic model for individuation, the logic of which collapses the distinction between the two different bodily traces. The article evaluates Massumi's conflation of his bipartite model of affect/semantic meaning with the dimensional approach to emotional response in affective science, judging this to be a “strategic scientism” with parallels in Nold’s practice. In summary, the article is a close study and innovative theorisation of a body of art practice dealing with technologies of tracking and tracing, and a contribution to debates on affect as it is understood across disciplines.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -