Emergent methodologies between disciplinary belongings: new materialism and transdisciplinary creative practice

At present we are living through times of profound and increasingly rapid change in which oppositional thinking is gaining renewed criticism. Human actions and the material products of our culture have significantly altered the earth’s climate and ecology, thought is finally recognised as a biological and embodied process and humans are no longer seen as the pinnacle of evolution, but rather, as Timothy Morton asserts, part of an unpredictable, evolving and interconnected ‛mesh’ of animate and inanimate components. This rethinking, which is broadly linked to the multiple resonances of new materialism, has profound ethical, economic and political implications, but is also starting to transform approaches to creative practice as research. Drawing together ideas from the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Elizabeth Grosz and Estelle Barret and Barbara Bolt, the proposed paper examines the significance of corporeality and the vitality of matter in the context of transdisciplinary contemporary arts practice. Mapping the development of creative works produced in a nexus between art and science, the importance of environmental affordance, process and duration is addressed, with particular attention to the productive charge underpinned by a philosophy of becoming. The value of working across disciplinary terrains is also explored, with emphasis on the transformative potentials of hybrid methodologies that embrace uncertainty and highlight the value of lived experience and embodied interaction with the world.