Touched And Moved By Arts Introduction to a Transdisciplinary Discourse on Human Experience

Abstract

Professor Mira Kallio-Tavin (Doctor or Arts), is the Head of Research in the Department of Art in Aalto University, Finland. She focuses her research on critical artistic and arts-based practices and research in questions of di-versity, disability studies, social justice and critical animal studies. She is a World Councilor of InSEA (International Society for Education Through Art), the founder of the International Disability Studies, Arts and Education (DSAE) conference, and the founder of Nordic Visual Studies and Art Education (NoVA) master’s program. She is the author and editor of six books, and editor of journals Research in Arts and Education (principle editor) and The International Journal of Education through Art (editor). Heidi Fast is an and in live art and performance studies. Fast is currently finalizing her artistic doctoral research on the transformational potential of non-verbal affective communication, in Aalto University. Fast works in a multidisciplinary research project, called “Experi-ential Demarcation: Multidisciplinary Inquiries into the Affective Foundations of Interaction” Taipale, Jyväskylä). Her doctoral research is actualized in co-operation Helsinki Central Hospital The themes of Fast ´ s artistic research are imminently connected with art working, that involves wide projects and series of artworks, such as Hospital (2015–2019), which was actualized to the hospital space, concert hall and Abstract Artistic research focuses on experiences that are difficult to grasp conceptu-ally. This article aims at a common transdisciplinary ground for understanding how people are ‘touched and moved’ by arts. Basic neuroscientific princi-ples—predictive processing, interoception, and bodily feelings—appeared useful in discussing artistic research: (1) How pre-existing knowledge affected people’s percepts of each other while they participated in nonverbal vocal art with psychiatric patients, (2) how an author–painter had strong embodied experiences while viewing visual art, and (3) how a well-practised embodied skill, walking, was transformed into an extremely slow-speed performance, in-tensifying the sensations from the environment and limiting mind-wandering. These artistic experiences demonstrate the usefulness of verbalising rich artis-120 tic experiences and reveal the tight connection between mental content and motor activity.