"…it's only through radically redesigning the body that we will end up having significantly different thoughts and philosophies"
- Stelarc (Atzori and Woolford 1995)
#Discussion
The works described in this dissertation are the result of a network way of thinking. The body and the self are not singular or static, but rather continuously redefined and recreated through their relationship with technology, society, their environment and their context.
I conceptualised four different hypothesis of the networked body – distributed networks, remote networks, social media networks and neural networks – and explored how these concepts can inform the design of participatory sound works. In turn, the works themselves became co-opted into the flow of the network, becoming part of the zeitgeist that disrupts traditional notions of the body.
Although each work has been discussed under a particular heading, in reality, they are informed by multiple conceptions of different networks. For example, all works discussed in this exegesis incorporate neural networks as an essential component of their exploration. Mental Dance, Musical Lunch, Electromagnetic Room and Guài use AI computer vision models for tracking and analysing the corporeal body. Scrape Elegy and Guài incorporate artificial neural voices that simulate the human voice. Guài and Echo Chamber use large language models such as ChatGPT and MusicGen to generate music or systems based on text instructions. As we head into a future where more and more applications incorporate AI into their systems, arguably, many artistic works will become part of this neural network culture whether by express intention of the artist or not.
All works also exemplify distributed networks, connecting different hardware, software, people and fields of knowledge to create multiform experiences that explore as well as problematise the impact of technology on our bodies and on society. The distributed nature of the systems allowed me to not only bypass the processing limitations of any one component, but to create works that involve multiple sense perceptions of the corporeal body and creative sharing between multiple artists and participants. The distributed systems also allowed for the expansion of the transcorporeal body, supporting the creation of works that were not limited by spatiotemporality but could extend into immersive spaces and dissolve into the network itself.
Although only Mental Dance and Musical Lunch used remote locations in the final outcome, all works were developed with collaborators through processes that incorporated teleconferencing applications such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, remote access control applications such as TeamViewer and LogMeIn, Wi-Fi and WebSocket communication networks and web-based research. Remote networks were therefore a core part of the processes and design of the works. The distributed nature of the systems also provide the potential for the works to be adapted to online or hybrid platforms in future iterations.
While Scrape Elegy directly engaged with social media as a source of sound and artistic material, the other works discussed were also impacted by social media networks. Musical Lunch was inspired by the social media phenomenon of mukbang, where eating becomes a form of remote connection as traditional familial communities break down and performativity enters the everyday. The pervasiveness and insidious nature of the network means that things, us, get co-opted into the network whether we like it or not. The AI technologies used in the works – computer vision, facial biometric analysis, text-to-speech, large language models and generative AI – only exist because of large datasets scraped off social media and the internet.
By being part of the artistic ecosystem, attending performances and exhibitions, posting about the works, making art, writing about art, we are inevitably feeding and simultaneously being fed by the network, constructing and being constructed.
#Discoveries
This research aimed to investigate ways in which an expanded concept of the body afforded by contemporary digital technologies can be harnessed for participatory sound-making within installation and performance art contexts. Ultimately, the essence of my investigation was how sound and body coalesce to convey meaning. By adopting an undisciplinary approach that integrates network thinking, participatory engagement and multimodality, I reached nine key conclusions outlined below that address my research questions.
Research Question 1: How can an expanded conception of the body - fragmented, distributed, and mediated through digital networks - enable novel forms of participatory sound-making?
Key Conclusion 1: By freeing the body from traditional notions of corporeality, we can create works that are distributed across local and remote networks, providing accessibility and wider reach.
Although Mental Dance was forged out of forced isolation, it highlighted the capacity for telematic performance to create new forms of engagement, particularly for those who face barriers to physical presence. Similarly, Musical Lunch demonstrated how a communal sonic experience could be fostered through digital networks, allowing for a multiplicity of participatory engagements across geographical divides. These works underscore the potential for participatory sound-making to be more inclusive and adaptive.
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Key Conclusion 2: The expanded notion of the body can instigate novel interactive design.
Ideas of virtual embodiment informed the conceptualisation of Guài, which led to our decision to explore biometric analysis and interactive sound through virtual avatars. Similarly, notions of constructed bodies and identity inspired the design of Scrape Elegy. While these two works could have explored their themes of biometric surveillance and social media through entirely different interactive media (e.g. text interface), the incorporation of the expanded body enabled more interesting and engaging participatory design.
Research Question 2: How does an undisciplinary and multimodal approach, reflective of network culture, facilitate new methods of participatory sound-making by repurposing and remixing diverse technologies and creative practices?
Key Conclusion 3: Contemporary digital technologies afford increasingly varied and novel modes of embodied interactivity.
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Artists have long appropriated new technologies to create interactive interfaces for sound creation. Embodied interactivity can be achieved through well-established technologies such as wearable sensors and infra-red cameras that track body position in space, body movement, touch and bio-signals. Recent developments, however, enable new modes of interaction that go beyond traditional embodiment. For example, AI computer vision allows bodies to be tracked and measured without geographical or temporal proximity. Mental Dance and Electromagnetic Room explored these new affordances for remote and distributed performances. Musical Lunch explored web audio and teleconferencing applications for communal online participatory sound-making.
Similarly, the development of fast text-to-speech neural voices enabled real-time participatory interactivity for Scrape Elegy. This turned what would otherwise be a visual or text-based experience into a more interesting and uncanny sonic journey. As AI technologies expand even more into the realms of surveillance, biomedicine, and even personalised companions, the role of the contemporary interactive artist necessitates becoming a hacker.
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Key Conclusion 4: Participatory sound-making is inherently multimodal in networked environments.
Contemporary network conceptions inspire the design of interactive experiences that reflect this culture of remix and fragmentation. Interactive design, therefore, expands beyond one human and one machine, into multi-varied configurations involving multiple humans, multiple machines and multiple systems. Scrape Elegy, for example, required connectivity between multiple Instagram accounts, data scraping applications, text-to-speech services, a human voice actor and participants. In turn, participants uploaded their experiences of the installation into Instagram, creating a feedback loop of interactions. In Guài, participants brought home an AR marker, superimposing their virtual avatar onto their everyday world well beyond the time limits of their physical experience in the installation courtesy of their own smart devices. The projects exemplify how participatory sound-making now exists across multiple sensory and technological modalities, where sound can no longer be thought of as an isolated medium but as part of a larger networked assemblage that includes data, movement and interactivity.
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Key Conclusion 5: An undisciplinary approach is crucial and reflective of network society.
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This research was guided by an undisciplinary approach that adopts an exploratory stance, drawing from multiple knowledge systems, creative processes, and technological developments. By integrating sound, visuals, movement, physical installation, and digital networks, the projects developed multi-dimensional perspectives that mirrored the complexity and interconnectedness of contemporary networked culture. This approach reflects the increasingly hybrid nature of creative practice in the digital age, where artistic works are no longer confined to singular media but evolve as dynamic assemblages of diverse influences, responding to technological, cultural, and theoretical shifts.
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Scrape Elegy and Musical Lunch explored the fragmented nature of post-internet identity and participatory culture, where digital traces, user-generated content, and algorithmic remixing shape contemporary self-expression. Guài engaged with post-humanist philosophy, interrogating the role of AI and biometric data in shaping identity. Mental Dance was informed by neuroscience and cognitive studies, examining how human perception and learning can interact with machine intelligence. Echo Chamber drew from cultural studies, particularly in its examination of authorship, repetition, and recombination through generative music AI. Electromagnetic Room was underpinned by cybernetic theory, highlighting the role of feedback loops, emergent behaviour and non-linear systems in participatory sound-making.
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This wide-ranging set of theoretical and artistic influences demonstrates the necessity of an undisciplinary approach in engaging with the complexities of network society. Rather than adhering to a linear, hierarchical model of inquiry, this research embraces a more fluid, rhizomatic structure that allows for appropriation, remixing, and reconfiguration of knowledge across disciplines. This reflects the operational logic of network culture itself - non-linear, distributed, and adaptive - where meaning emerges not from singular authorship but from the interplay of interconnected agents. By adopting an undisciplinary methodology, this research highlights how participatory sound-making functions within a broader cultural and technological landscape that is in constant flux, reinforcing the idea that contemporary artistic practice must remain open, responsive, and critically engaged with the evolving conditions of digital life.
Research Question 3: In what ways can participatory interaction involving an expanded, networked body function as a site for multi-layered meaning-making in sound practice?
Key Conclusion 6: Participatory design enables sound to convey multi-layered meaning through embodied experiences that are evocative rather than didactic.
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In the age of sound recording and skills specialisation, we are increasingly passive listeners to music rather than active producers of music. Participatory approaches allowing non-expert musicians to create music enable a much more multi-layered experience of sonic works that embrace ambiguity and individuality. For example, Echo Chamber invited visitors to question generative AI’s role in reinforcing dominant musical cultures through listening to their own musical creation rather than a didactic textual explanation or generic sound file. This opened the work to multiple meanings as visitors came to their own impressions. For some, the work reinforced the creative potential of generative music AI. For others, it had the opposite effect. And for many, the work produced contradictory feelings, highlighting the ability for art to hold the irrational or paradoxical. A similar ambiguity related to technology was explored in Guài and Scrape Elegy, allowing visitors to form complex and individual impressions of biometric technology and social media through holding up an artistic "mirror" to themselves.
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Key Conclusion 7: Networked participation blurs boundaries between audience, performer and system
A key discovery of this research is that participatory sound-making in a networked context destabilises traditional roles. Across these projects, the role of composer, performer, and audience was fluid, with participants co-constructing the sonic experience alongside AI, sensor-based systems, and real-time interaction models. This reflects broader shifts in participatory culture, where meaning is no longer dictated by a single authorial voice but is emergent, relational and contingent on networked interaction.
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Key Conclusion 8: These participatory interactions can be collaborative but also oppositional and problematic.
In Mental Dance, teleconferencing technology enabled a multimodal interactive system between dancers, sound designer, choreographer, vocalist and audience. During a time of isolation, collaboration became possible. Paradoxically, for the dancers, the technology often reinforced a feeling of isolation rather than collaboration, as they adapted to working without touch or feeling the others’ presence. Similarly for the audience, there was an ambiguity about liveness ("is this really live or pre-recorded?") and connection.
In a different vein, Scrape Elegy resulted in a phenomenon of participants inputting other people’s Instagram handles. Although they could only input handles that were already open to the public, this inadvertently contributed to the very concerns about privacy and social media that the work was attempting to spotlight.
The paradoxical nature of these interactions reflects the paradoxes inherent in networked society, where technology is simultaneously used for contradictory ends and where cause and effect entangle. Embracing these contradictions can lead to multi-layered meaning.
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Key Conclusion 9: Participatory interactive design allows sound-based works to emphasise the relational, social and political.​
The use of embodied participatory interaction, particularly within an expanded concept of the body, allowed me to develop sound-based works that critically engage with social and political issues. By integrating participatory interfaces with networked technologies, works such as Scrape Elegy and Guài interrogated the ethical implications of AI and digital surveillance, demonstrating how participatory sound-making can serve as a critical and reflective medium. In Scrape Elegy, audience social media captions were transformed through neural voices, questioning the agency and ownership of digital expression, while Guài explored the biases inherent in biometric data-driven systems, challenging conventional notions of identity and representation. These works highlight how participatory interactive design can move beyond aesthetic concerns to function as a mode of socio-political critique, exposing the hidden infrastructures that shape digital culture.
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Furthermore, participatory interaction created new pathways for relational engagement between artists and audiences. Electromagnetic Room demonstrated how participatory sound-making can reshape traditional performance structures by dissolving rigid distinctions between performer and audience. Mental Dance and Musical Lunch used telematic performance to challenge the necessity of physical proximity in embodied artistic practice, expanding the possibilities for social interaction in remote and networked contexts. Across these projects, participatory interactive design not only functioned as an artistic strategy but also as a means of exploring broader socio-political questions, emphasising how sound-based works can act as relational sites where human and non-human agents intersect, contest and negotiate meaning.
#Impact On My Own Practice
Through the creation of the works in my folio, my practice has, like the networked body itself, transformed, expanded, and opened. I have a greater sensitivity to the role of all bodily senses (not just auditory) and the performativity of space in the creation of multi-layered and multimodal artistic experiences. I have developed an aesthetic signature characterised by modular design, real-time generation and ephemerality rather than pre-recorded audio or set music scores. I have become more aware of philosophical or socio-political fractures in everyday life and how that becomes fodder for creative expression. I have expanded my technical skills from primarily notation-based composition to working with visual programming languages such as MaxMSP and TouchDesigner, gaming engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine and coding languages such as Python and Javascript. And I have discovered a penchant for bringing together people from different fields and finding mutual ground for creative expression through an undisciplined approach that “enables the possibilities of paths not yet travelled” (Krippendorff 2016).
#Implications for Further Research
This research demonstrates an approach to art-making that embraces undisciplinarity as the default position. Rather than restricting the works to a specific skill-set, I draw collaborators from diverse forms and artistic or technical fields, as well as working myself across forms. In part, this is reflective of the influence of network culture on my practice, but also a deliberate strategy to expand sound into domains which traditionally excluded or deprioritised sound over the visual – including museums, galleries and virtual worlds. Further research can be conducted on strategies for collaborative undisciplinary best practice or the creation of artistic and institutional ecosystems that foster undisciplinarity. While there has long been an interest in interdisciplinarity, new forms of telematic technologies and increasingly urgent environmental considerations require the formulation of contemporary strategies.
In developing the works, a few specific areas for potential future research have also been identified. Musical Lunch commenced an investigation on the potential for web audio to be harnessed for communal participatory music-making. This is a field that has seen little, if any, research and very few practical examples. Similarly, the use of generative music AI for real-time participatory sound works has only just begun and warrants much further research on many issues such as system optimisation strategies, prompt design, musical control and digital ethics. The use of sound in post-internet and social art has also greatly lagged behind the visual or textual media and calls out for further practical applications.
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The most direct future implications of this research lie in applying a networked concept of the body for other creative practitioners in developing works that utilise novel participatory interactions. The notion of remote networks, distributed networks, social media networks and neural networks as different aspects of the networked body can be applied beyond sound to other art forms or combinations of art forms. It can also be applied to the development of works with a diverse range of intent and meaning. The design strategies of interactivity, participation, embodiment and multimodality are already prevalent features transforming our cultural landscape. They are, for example, key attributes of game design and social media applications. Interactive participation as a strategy to create custom artistic experiences have also become increasingly common, perhaps as a side effect of recommender algorithms and personalised ads creating an expectation for customisation based on our individual profiles and taste. How we see, hear and experience is changing. Mixed reality devices and the Internet of Things are becoming more integrated into our everyday life, and machines are interfacing with our body to automate decision-making.
It is impossible to predict what new forms of art this will engender. However, our experience of this art will necessitate thinking about how our body interfaces with it – perhaps not our corporeal body, but some aspect of our expanded body.