Building the Emotional Body was created as part of a seven-month-long residency at THECUBE in East London. THECUBE is a co-working and exhibition space dedicated to design, science and technology, and hosts a research lab focused on the study and understanding of how human perception works.

Seven artists explored unique aspects of embodiment and emotion relevant to our ongoing practices, including topics such as gravity, sensory perception, objects and memory, and emotional identity. Through the em-em residency, we each aimed to bring new perspectives to current dialogues around mind and body, building bridges between disciplines. The work and interests were shared through an exhibition and a series of talks open to the public.

Building the Emotional Body is a series created to reflect body maps observing bodily sensations associated with different emotions, from data that was collected across a multi-country study. The study focused on six “basic” emotions: anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise; and seven “non-basic” emotions: anxiety, love, depression, contempt, pride, shame, envy.

Several hundred participants were given prompts to provoke emotional reactions, through words, vignettes or short stories, videos, or images. They then self-reported their responses, charting where in the body they felt physical sensory changes by assigning colour to two silhouettes – one for increasing sensation where activity become stronger or faster, and the other decreasing or weaker sensation. What emerged were patterns of activation of specific areas of the body or body parts for distinct emotions – patterns that crossed languages and cultures.