The Secret Life of the Body 1 (UNIB10011)

Ever thought about how we actually see, hear, taste, smell and touch? How do musicians, dancers, artists, athletes, martial artists and yoga practitioners do what they do? And how does this relate to findings and hidden secrets in scientific research about the body and the brain?

In an increasingly global and collaborative world the need to have a knowledge of the whole, the interconnections between disciplines, their languages and approaches, histories and cultural expressions, is essential to understanding 21st century problems and creating practical and innovative solutions.

This subject explores the intricate links and parallels between the arts, science, philosophy, architecture, mysticism, medicine (both western and eastern), law, and economics, through understandings of the human body.

Underpinning The Secret Life of the Body is recognition of the value of interdisciplinarity and the role it plays in understanding critical vocabularies and new areas of research. The focus on the exchange of ideas between students and teachers across the schools and campuses, shapes the range of issues that the human body presents to us, in all the ways that we experience it - intellectually, personally, kineaesthetically and in multi disciplinary forms.

The Secret Life of the Body aims to:

• introduce students to historical representations and interpretations of the body;
• familiarize students with a range of discipline-specific technical and theoretical terms by bringing them into plain English to facilitate communication;
• enrich student's vocabularies and to explore a range of assumptions within disciplines, eg: the "objectivity" of science verses the "subjectivity" of aesthetic judgement;
• provide the ground for new modes of understanding and representation of the body;
• integrate practice with theory through aligning studio/laboratory with lecture/tutorial based learning;
• contribute to and enrich current debate on the human body;
• engage students with culturally diverse practices and customs associated with the body.