Page 177 - AC-3-3

Arts & Communication Digital somatic arts: Choreographing autonomy

of bodily training, of which somatics is a part, the authority is a key component, i.e., allowing themselves to
Merleau–Pontian concept of the body-in-itself acts as a be directed by the new sensations they experience, and
“perceptual environment.” Somatics takes into account to verify them by constantly communicating this sensory
47
the development of body awareness in relation to, and in information with the somatic educator.
active interaction with, the environment as a whole. During these experiments, sensory and perceptual

In the context of our experiments, several environments destabilizations took place and are at the root of the positive
are interacting with each other: those created and felt by results obtained by Germain in terms of the acquisition of
the practitioners of the Feldenkrais method of somatic autonomy, which is one of the fundamental principles of
education, as well as the technological environment of video Feldenkrais. To fully understand the scope and effects of
conferencing. According to Germain, in the Feldenkrais these destabilizations, we need to take into account several
context in hands-on mode, the client’s environment is positions and concepts, including those linked to the new
made up of two elements. First, the environment as felt status of the contemporary body in the technological
8
by the client is in the hands of the practitioner giving the context. Underlying this new status is the transformation of
treatment. Her hands are perceived as another ground, the concept of corporeity, the development of its associated
as students give their weight to the practitioner’s hands. plasticity, and the mediatization of the moving—and to
However, at the same time, she also makes them aware of some extent performative—body.
the ground, the surface on which their body rests.
6.1. First condition: The influence of the technology
In video conferencing, on the other hand, the
environment is dual and interacting, but in a different At the root of these positive results lies the sensitive,
way. In this context, there is no direct physical contact somatic body, which recreates and recomposes itself when
with the practitioner; instead, there is a distance that it incorporates the effects of destabilization, including those
is destabilizing. Here, there is only awareness of the caused by technology. To understand this phenomenon,
ground. But this awareness is made more complex by we initially adopt an approach in which technology is
the technological environment of video conferencing, not just viewed as a materiality (a physical object, such
which alters sensations, as there is an impoverishment of as a computer), but where this technology is understood
sensory information in video conferencing: most of the to affect the molecular, chemical, or psycho-corporal
time, we only have access to sound in mono mode and constitution of our body (like a wave, for example, or video
vision is reduced to the camera’s field of view, as well as conferencing systems that put us in contact with several
being two-dimensional rather than three-dimensional. realities at once, thus causing a destabilizing acceleration
48
Furthermore, not all our senses are involved. This greatly of our phenomenal reality). In this approach, technology
alters our perception, which is expressed in particular has an invisible component, which will penetrate and affect
through the interpretation of sensations in interaction with the body.
our environmental context. In this case, the destabilization The consequence is that there will be a reorganization of
manifests itself to begin with as a consequence of this the body, of its sensations and perceptions, via this physical
sensory-perceptual impoverishment. contact with technology. Here, the body integrates the
A lack of trust is created between the pupil and the effects or consequences of technology both physically and
practitioner. Both Germain and her students questioned psycho-corporeally. This brings about a transformation of
whether she would be able to see and feel, through the the body, a mutation as advocated above. We are therefore
video conferencing system, the changes and improvements witnessing an ontological shift in both the body (i.e., what
in the subject as she saw and felt them face-to-face (an is the body, how do we understand the body) and the
enhanced ability she had developed thanks in part to sensory environment, as the technology is experienced
her dual training in Feldenkrais and as a performing here. This mutation, linked to the body’s plasticity, enables
artist). This required Germain to adapt her lessons to an us to better understand the transversal relationships
experiential mode, multiplying her exchanges with her between the Feldenkrais method, the body in movement,
pupils by requesting a much greater amount of information the technologies, and their consequences for health.
and confirmation from her students. In the process, In these new environments, technology forces us to
subjects also had to adapt and acquire a greater sense of reorganize and recompose our internal sensory mapping,
responsibility, leading to the maturity and autonomy just as Germain and her students learned to do. This also has
we discussed earlier. They moved from passive attention implications for the phenomenon of embodiment, which,
(receiving and being in a state of abandonment during in the context of this research, is approached as an act of
hands-on lessons) to active attention, of which sensory integration through the lived body, as the body integrates

Volume 3 Issue 3 (2025) 7 doi: 10.36922/ac.4477