Deakin University (Melbourne, Australia) will host the second international Body of Knowledge: Art and Embodied Cognition Conference, focusing on the intersections of art and science, to foster conversations that increase the potential for knowledge transfer and celebrate diverse forms of embodied expertise. The conference thematics have been expanded to include cultures of practice and communities of practitioners that offer a range of perspectives on inclusion, diversity / neurodiversity and disability. The aim is to encourage the discussion of art as a process of social cognition and address the gap between descriptions of embodied cognition and the co-construction of lived experience.

BoK2019 will generate questions that explore the dynamic between an organism and its surroundings, by asking:  How does art shift the way knowledge and thinking processes are acquired, extended and distributed? How do cognitive theories offer ways to enact and change individual and collective ways of thinking? The aims of the first Body of Knowledge Art and Embodied Cognition Conference, which was held at UC IRVINE in 2016 were to “bring together an interdisciplinary group including cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, philosophers of mind, physiologists, psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, computer scientists, artists and designers to explore emerging cognitive neuroscience and theories of embodied cognition.”

The expanded and inclusive approach to BoK2019 will emphasize lived-experience of research. This will be reflected in the structure of the conference—designed as a series of activated conversations. Keynote presentations will be designed as conversations, pairing researchers and practitioners that have art and/or science expertise into one session. This will allow diverse perspectives to interact and promote discussion across the delegation. Keynote Conversations will include prominent researchers and practitioners in the sciences, arts, design, social sciences and humanities. [*] 

The concept of interdisciplinary exchange will permeate the event in other ways, including an ‘audit traces’ team who will be tracking, recording and reporting on interactions as well as speculating on the way disciplinary perspectives adapt and transform. The conference will attract scientists, scholars, designers and creative practitioners and cultural producers (art educators, arts administrators, art-health practitioners).

The conference, hosted by Deakin University, is co-sponsored by the School of Communication and Creative Arts, the Science and Society Network (Alfred Deakin Institute), School of Health and Social Development, the Disability, Inclusion & Advocacy at Deakin and the Senselab (Concordia University, Montreal).