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Alien Bodies
Introduction
Alien Bodies is an art-science collaboration between Steve Klee (art) and Kirsten McKenzie (psychology). This interdisciplinary multiverse encompasses a psychology experiment investigating body image, a book chapter situating our empirical work within a posthuman ethical framework to generate a maximally inclusive vision of the body, and an art video that science-fictionalizes our experiment to explore and interrogate it. Ecological, decolonial, and queer insights drive a narrative in which a research team embarks on an interstellar journey, encountering and learning from extra-terrestrial beings. Additionally, a public workshop was designed for young people (aged 16 to 24) aiming to enhance body confidence by reducing participants’ body dissatisfaction.
One of the most exciting aspects of the Alien Bodies project is that it brings together so many strands of my work. I’m able to pursue my art practice as a video-maker, explore philosophical perspectives and sci-fi aesthetics, and collaborate across disciplines with Psychology — all of which fosters real innovation. At the same time, the project aims to make a difference for young people by promoting body image literacy and wellbeing
Dr Steve Klee
Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, specialising in posthumanism, aesthetics, cognitive science (body representation, embodiment), art-science methodology.
Experiment: Alien Bodies and How to Wear Them
Alongside Klee and McKenzie, Psychology PhD student Heather Sunderland, and Fine Art undergraduate Kai Speed took part in an iterative-creative process to develop images of aliens (imagined creatures from beyond our solar system). These images were then used to facilitate a psychological experiment, shedding light on body image and offering a pathway to potential therapies for pathological body dissatisfaction. Specifically, this research explores whether elevated bodily appearance concerns would affect a person’s willingness to embody a physical form vastly different from their own. Preliminary analysis of the experimental data showed that individuals with elevated bodily appearance concerns were indeed less likely to entertain embodying a more alien figure than those who reported lower levels of body image dissatisfaction.
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Workshop: The Alien Embodiment Laboratory
An art-science workshop was created to boost body confidence and ease negative feelings about size and weight. Featuring a talk, 12-min art video, discussion, embodiment illusions with mirage system, and creating alien body images or sci-fi tales.
Book Chapter: Alien Embodiment and Nomadic Subjectivity: A Speculative Report
In a chapter for the publication Posthumanism in Practice, researchers describe the experiment and outline potential avenues for future exploration, aiming to develop therapeutic approaches to address ‘negative body image’. A plan is articulated to utilise virtual reality (VR) to create body swap illusions; an induced perception that a person owns an avatar body. The chapter also situates our empirical work within Rosi Braidotti’s critical posthumanism, specifically her formulation of nomadic subjectivity. With Braidotti, ‘the human’ is understood to be a category marked by violence, in that it is dependent upon the exclusion of marginalised people, and non-humans. Further exclusions pertain to body image: to be properly human is to look a certain way. Braidotti’s method for countering this violence involves fostering nomadic subjectivity, a mode of being that is hybrid; one that embraces excluded others. It is asserted that the proposed VR embodiment illusions should be understood as nomadic in this way – an ethical contestation of the outdated and narrow definition of the human.
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Find out more
Find out more about Alien Bodies, inspired by sci-fi and campus novel genres, explores perception and embodiment via predictive processing and extended mind thesis.