Performative Space, Embodiment, and Place in Emerging Digital Environments

About the Project

This practice-based PhD project investigates how emerging digital technologies reconfigure relationships between body, space and place within contemporary immersive and performative art practices. While generative media enables new spatial experiences, current systems often treat ‘place’ as a passive backdrop, populated by static assets that ignore the visceral, living reality of the audience.

Unlike models focused solely on the production of audio-visual content, this PhD invites candidates to explore the development of a performative system that may function as an intelligent agent that actively sculpts the environment’s dynamics.

The successful candidate will shape the project and develop it through their own disciplinary, methodological or creative interests. Research projects may be engaged in interpreting physiological, neural and affective data of the performer and audience in real-time, aligning the digital space with the embodied state of its participants and/or foregrounding place as something enacted through the intra-action of bodies, technologies and environments.

Possible research questions

• How can real-time neuro-physiological signals be incorporated into a performance to enrich audience and performer experiences?
• Can embodied digital performances shape the “space” between performer and audience?
• How can the liveness of the audience–performer relationship be understood within a technology assisted performative space?
• What are the creative opportunities and technical challenges of combing the latest neuroscientific data with real-time performance?

Contributing to debates in immersive art and creative computing, projects that are attentive to ethical, embodied, and public dimensions of immersive technology are encouraged, with practice-based experimentation potentially including:

• interactive installations
• performative prototypes that respond to bodily movement, spatial proximity, and neuro-physiological signals.
• AI-driven systems, biofeedback, generative sound, and responsive visuals

Projects may follow a distinct technical trajectory, including using high-fidelity sensing such as motion-capture; wearable neuroimaging (via the CCI Nerve Lab); and physiological sensors to map subtle somatic signals.

Prior methodological and practical experience in computer science, digital arts, performance, and/or human-centred design will be useful for this research.

Project partner

Artinis Medical Systems serves as a partner providing expertise in wireless neuroimaging for moving bodies. Prof. Smith has partnered with Artinis in the past and can make 3 Artinis Brite MKII fNIRS systems available to the student within the Nerve Lab. Collaboration focuses on technical knowledge exchange, ensuring the physiological integrity of data used to aesthetically sculpt immersive environments.

Supervisors and research at UAL

• Dr Friendred Peng is an award-winning artist, Course Leader, and Senior Lecturer for MA 3D Computer Animation at LCC, UAL. Alongside his artistic practice, he is an active researcher and keynote speaker, contributing to international academic and creative communities.
• Professor Tim Smith is the Director of the Nerve Lab (CCI). He provides internationally recognised expertise in perception, attention and physiological measurement within complex visual and spatial environments. Tim’s leadership of the Nerve Lab offers the project access to advanced methods for analysing bodily and cognitive responses, enabling a distinctive integration of artistic practice with empirical investigation.

How to apply

See the application guidance and submit your application on our website.