ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY PULSE PROJECT: AN INVESTIGATION ACROSS BODIES, CULTURES AND TECHNOLOGY MICHELLE LEWIS-KING A thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Anglia Ruskin University for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Submitted: August 2016 i Acknowledgements: Firstly, I wish to thank the Cultures of the Digital Economy Research Institute (CoDE) for their generous support of this project and for also providing support for the opportunities to present this research across the United Kingdom and Europe. I particularly would like to thank Dr Samantha Rayner (former director) and Dr Rob Toulson director of CoDE for their support and guidance of this project. I would also like to acknowledge my supervisors Dr David Ryan, Dr Milla Tiainen and Dr Richard Hoadley for their time and crucial insights, which have significantly contributed towards the development of this thesis. I wish to thank, all of the participants who have contributed their comments and presence to the Pulse Project study, especially those participants who collaborated with me in continued discussions beyond the original performance events and those participants who created their own work as a response to this research. I particularly wish to thank Paul Ooman and the 4DSOUND Team, Ryoko Akama and Sumie Kent for collaborating with me on projects that contributed to the further development of this research. I also wish to thank Cinzia Scorzon and Professor Volker Scheid for their clinical and scholarly instructions on the art of Chinese medicine practice. Finally, I wish to thank Léna Lewis-King and Nicholas Fudge for their support of this research and for assisting in documenting this project. i ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY ABSTRACT FACULTY OF ARTS, LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PULSE PROJECT: AN INVESTIGATION ACROSS BODIES, CULTURES AND TECHNOLOGY MICHELLE LEWIS-KING AUGUST 2016 This thesis introduces Pulse Project (2011-2016), a creative research series exploring an ecology of complex relations between art, humanities, medicine, and technology. In this series, I embody transdisciplinary research practice through my performing as an instrument or medium between others and myself, and between cultural traditions for understanding and mediating the body. Drawing upon my expertise as a clinical acupuncturist with training in biomedicine, I use Chinese medicine and music theories to inform my algorithmic soundscape compositions. These soundscapes are not sonifications of modern Euro-American principles of circulation or embodiment but offer another perspective to conceive of/listen to the interior spaces of the body-in-being. In this transdisciplinary study, practice-based research is used to give form to the transdisciplinary research process by producing performances, personalised sound works, graphic notations and interpersonal correspondences that interweave artistic, medical and technological ways knowing together into new material configurations. This project also questions the distinctions between premodern and modern, East and West and self and other. To investigate these distinctions, Pulse Project interrogates the aesthetic and philosophical axioms underpinning modern and contemporary art, medicine and technology through using premodern Chinese medicine and music theories in tandem with cutting edge technology. Thus, this research travels laterally between cultures, practices and epochs and calls for a radical change in conceiving of the body in ‘oriental’ and ‘occidental’ terms in order to both reduce ethnocentrism and also to travel beyond the tired bifurcations between mind and body, self and others and Western and othered cultures. In combining art, technology and diverse medicines together with contemporary digital culture, this project opens transverse lines of inquiry that create new interconnections between disciplinary practices, whilst at the same time, it generates new forms of cultural engagement through performance and sound works. Keywords: Practice-Based Research, Transdisciplinary Research, Art, Science and Technology Studies, Chinese Medicine, Sound Studies. ii Contents i Acknowledgements ii Abstract vii Copyright 1 Preface 2 * Notes on Navigating this Thesis 3 Introduction 3 Summary of Overall Project 5 Context for Research Questions 7 Research Aims and Objectives 9 Research Questions 12 Dissemination and Contributions 13 Research Approach and Methodologies 14 Ethical Considerations 15 1. Research Approach and Methodologies 16 Preface 16 Interdisciplinary, Multidisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research 20 Methodology: Arts-Based and Practice-Based Research - An Entangled Field 23 Evaluation of Research Outcomes 29 2. Pulse Project: Key Theoretical Contexts 30 Preface 30 Art, Science and Technology (AST) 34 Feminist Science and Technology Studies 35 * Feminist Critique of Objectivity and the View from Nowhere 39 The Intersectional Body 45 The Clinic, Gestell and Performative Practice 45 * The Technological Frame of the Clinic 47 * Practice, Performance and the Clinic 51 3. Pulse Project: The Chinese Medicine Encounter 52 Preface iii 52 The Hegemony of the Clinic 52 * Definitions 54 * Clinical Experiences 55 * Debates 58 Pulse Project and Cross-Cultural Discourse 60 The Body-Politic of the Medical Gaze 64 On Clinical Auscultation and Diagnostics 67 Intercultural and Interpersonal Encounters with Medicine 68 * The Clinical Encounter: A Case Study 69 The Body Ecologic 76 Zhèng as Matrixial Interface 77 The Clinical Encounter as Sculpting Processes: Zhèng, Shén and Yì 80 The Sculpting of Infrasound (Qì) 83 4. Pulse Project: Practice-Based Works 84 Preface 84 Pulse Project (2011 – 2016) 85 Situating Pulse Project 87 The Pulse Reading Process 88 * The Chinese Pulse Diagnosis Procedure 91 The Notation Process 95 The Composing Process 96 An Introduction to Chinese Medicine and Music Theories 99 Soundscape Composition as a Healing Modality 102 Pulse Project: Instrumentation Processes 104 Pulse Project as Rhythmanalysis 106 The Peer Review Process 108 Participant Engagement and Feedback 108 * Feedback Methodology 109 * Results 110 * Some Key Responses 113 Collaborations 120 5. Art, Medicine, Society, Sound 121 Preface 122 Part One 123 Relational, Transversal and Ethico-Aesthetics iv 123 * Relational Aesthetics 125 * Transversal Relations and Ethico-Aesthetics 127 Pulse Project and Sound Studies 129 * Sound and the Affective Social Economy 136 Part Two 137 Biomusic, Aural Architecture and Pulse Project 137 * Listening to the Body: Biomusic 150 * Listening to Listening: Aural Architectures 151 Art, Science and Public Engagement 156 Chinese Medicine as Art 159 6. Conclusion 160 Preface 160 Findings and Implications 160 * Art, Medicine and Technology 165 * Pulse Project Performances and Intermediality 166 * Practice Based Methodology 168 * Sound Studies 169 Limitations 170 Further Research 171 Conclusion: Pulse Project and Rhythmanalysis I. References 174 Books, Videos, Catalogues, Journals, Online Sources, Miscellaneous 193 Images II. Appendices 196 Appendix I Glossary 202 Appendix II Publications 253 Appendix III Research Outputs 257 Appendix IV Exhibitions 268 Appendix V Ethics Proposal 273 Appendix VI Participant Information Sheets 278 Appendix VII Participant Questionnaire 280 Appendix VIII Participant Feedback Log 290 Appendix IX Pulse Project Notations 306 Appendix X SuperCollider Code Example v 308 Appendix XI SuperCollider Compositions 323 Appendix XII Ryoko Akama’s PULSE Score 329 Appendix XIII Collaboration Emails III. Accompanying Material: Digital Audio Files* 343 List of Pulse Project Soundscapes * This section refers to the audio files submitted in accompaniment with this thesis. vi COPYRIGHT Attention is drawn to the fact that copyright of this thesis rests with: (i) Anglia Ruskin University for one year and thereafter with (ii) Michelle Lewis-King This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is bound by copyright. This work may: (i) be made available for consultation within Anglia Ruskin University Library (ii) be lent to other libraries for the purpose of consultation or may be photocopied for such purposes (iii) be made available in Anglia Ruskin University’s repository and made available on open access worldwide for non-commercial educational purposes, for an indefinite period. vii Pulse Project Performance at the V&A (2013) [performance view]. Sackler Centre, Victoria and Albert Museum. © Michelle Lewis-King. Photo: Nick Fudge. viii Preface This thesis presents Pulse Project, a transdisciplinary and practice-based research (PBR)1 project conducted at various public locations between the years 2011 – 2016. As such, the production of practice-based works forms the fundamental basis for making contributions towards transdisciplinary research, particularly the cross-disciplinary field of art, science and technology studies (AST).2 This project’s research objectives and questions originate from my experience of practising as an artist-acupuncturist within the context of the (British) biomedical clinic. Viewed syncretically, these practices can be characterised as transdisciplinary and intercultural by their very nature, since working with the body as an artist-acupuncturist within context of the biomedical clinic integrates together three disciplines (art, medicine and technology) and two cultural approaches to medicine (biomedicine and Chinese medicine). Given this experience, I have come to view the Chinese medicine clinical encounter as a unique time-space that contains