Modeling the Immune System with Gestures: A Choreographic View of Embodiment in Science

Abstract

The authors describe a cross-disciplinary collaboration in which they apply both a qualitative/quantitative and a choreographic analysis to the gestures immunologists use when lecturing on immunity. They identify particular spatiotemporal features by which immunologists have mapped, embodied and blended the conceptual spaces of the molecular and cellular. The immunologists’ difficulties in integrating the differing spatiotemporal modes of observing and embodying revealed hidden policies in their concepts of immunity. The variety of modes, blending and cinematic techniques applied invite a closer cross-disciplinary look at the vivid visual scenario of gesturing in science and consideration of its potential for creating corporeal models of art and science.

Entangled Speech

“…In Spitparty (Spiess and Strecker 2014 ) saliva took the role as semiotic material passable directly from mouth to mouth. In Hare’s Blood (Spiess and Strecker 2017 ) Voicescapes (Johnson 2004 ) stemming from capitalistic auction chants directed the survival of a living microbial artwork, and in a recent project we analysed immunologists’ gestures while they were explaining how microbes invaded the human body (Spiess et al 2018 ).…”