Liveness is the sense of living presence. It always involves action in the present, an awareness of now. The presence one senses may be quite elsewhere, such as in the live broadcast or a vivid memory recall, but it is always of the present moment. Today, the condition of liveness is amplified and multiplied through new technologies of dynamic sensitivity. Objects and events are often animated with new kinds of life-like power and complexity. This occurs in quite literal ways through technological invention (such as the proliferation of sensors, artificial intelligence systems etc) and can be felt through the intensified variability, instability and sensitivity of socio-cultural operations.

We could, instead, use the term ofaliveness. However, removing the a lightens the baggage of the 'natural', 'organic' or 'biological', becoming more inclusive of things usually not thought of as alive. We were also keen to be both inclusive of, but not exclusively suggestive of A-Life or artificial life. We are intensely interested in both the biological and the digital, but predominantly in terms of how they take part in the many and varied forms of life, many of which are scarcely realised as such.

Our manifold of spatial-arts based research always involves ways that affectively defined (qualitative, emergent) forms of life arise across diverse media, moments and spaces.

This is a manifold of life forms.


The Liveness Manifold is a cluster of overlapping, intersecting and cross-looping creative research projects that explore these conditions. These projects move through architecture, installation art, sound art, bio-art, theory/philosophy, fiction, haptics, performance art, animation, sculpture...

keywords: tactility, technology, presence, affect, emergence

key members: pia ednie-brown, inger mewburn, boo chapple

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