Historically, the concept of embodied cognition distinguished itself from the assumption that cognition only happened in the brain. By contrast, Big Data promises the omniscience of surveillance and the infallibility of algorithms, offering disembodied processing as a way to render theoretical models, the people/bodies who generate them, and the geographies of their development irrelevant. In such a time, locating cognition in bodies and place becomes a distinction once again. But what are the affordances of once more tethering knowledge making to a set of bodies and their histories? Why, in practical rather than ethical terms, would an academic be interested in her body or her community as a knowledge-making resource?
Drawing on the fields of Communication, Education, Cognitive Science, and Science and Technology Studies, this workshop explores the qualities of the incongruent sets that result from computational, personal, and collaborative knowledge making practices. It first reminds us that approaching knowledge with an eye to its generative locations reveals a thick and socially located history out of line with the origin stories that seat “pure” science in nature. Then, it follows concepts of knowledge making from the brain, through the body, and into collaboration between multiple bodies. Finally, it offers extended hands-on engagement to both to demonstrate concepts and while reflexively generating understanding of our academic practices of embodied cognition.
During the majority of this workshop, participants will employ applied techniques drawn from open space practices, active learning, popular education, critical pedagogy, and applied theater, developing facility with these tools while performing them to generate a collaborative map of our embodied academic practices and the social dynamics in which they are located. The results of these practices will be visible both through material documentation and observable performances.
