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“This book reveals the subtle, intrinsic power of creativity, not only in the arts, but as a vital force in how we sense, and make meaning. It reframes creativity as embodied, somatic, and material inquiry - alive in the generative interplay of theory and practice, and essential to transformation.”
Dr Suzanne Osmond, Head of Academic Development and Research, NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art), Australia
“This book beckons the reader to value and catalyse the embodied cognition within, and to mineralise it -grounding creative intelligence in both professional settings and the lived world more broadly.”
Cecilia Warren, Company Director and Strategic Advisor in Creativity and Innovation, iMove Australia
“In a world that so often slices us into silos, even within ourselves, this book is a timely offering. It is a living inquiry, where creative practice and deep theory entwine revealing a rigorous, and hopeful way of being. A gentle act of self-care and cultural repair.”
Jon Adams, Distinguished Professor, School of Public Health, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
“Barbara Doran reveals how pragmatic creativity can challenge lazy assumptions and dangerous defaults, offering the art of living as a way to meet complexity with care and clarity.”
Rodger Watson, Research Fellow in Innovation Strategy and Design Futures Specialist, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK
This book distils thirty years of creative practice into a rigorous inquiry that bridges artmaking, somatic intelligence, and systems thinking. Rooted in the author’s concept of Embodied Matter Exploration (EME), it positions creativity as cultural metabolism, where material, memory, and body co-compose meaning. Each chapter unfolds around an artwork as theory, method, and intervention. Resisting fragmentation, the book integrates autoethnography, semiotics, and living systems thinking.
Academic literature is treated as a dialogical companion. By participating in meaning making and interpretation, readers gain new perceptions of self, nature, and society, and develop critical reflections to challenge pressing issues such as social injustice, environmental sustainability, and technology’s shaping impacts. A thought-provoking read for those interested in systems theory, anthropology, health psychology, neuroscience, and ecology, this practice-led and autoethnographic work opens new paths to possibility studies and creative research.
Barbara Doran is Course Director for the Creative Intelligence and Strategic Innovation program at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia.
List of contents
Abstract.- Chapter 1. The Lay of the Land.- Chapter 2. My Process in Making Art .- Chapter 3. Transdisciplinary Enquiry and a Phenomenological Approach.- Chapter 4. A Global Traveler.- Chapter 5. Culture as a membrane for being.- Chapter 6. The body, nature and binaries.- Chapter 7. Learning To EEEM. Building an earth house.- Chapter 8. Searching for the Body’s Voice in an Industrialised, in a Fiat Economy.- Chapter 9. Creative Arteries, Arterioles and Capillaries.- Chapter 10. Dela. Confluences and alluvium. Sublimation.- Afterword. Superorganism collective and practicing mind in life.
About the author
Barbara Doran is Course Director for the Creative Intelligence and Strategic Innovation program at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia.
Summary
This book distils thirty years of creative practice into a rigorous inquiry that bridges artmaking, somatic intelligence, and systems thinking. Rooted in the author’s concept of Embodied Matter Exploration (EME), it positions creativity as cultural metabolism, where material, memory, and body co-compose meaning. Each chapter unfolds around an artwork as theory, method, and intervention. Resisting fragmentation, the book integrates autoethnography, semiotics, and living systems thinking.
Academic literature is treated as a dialogical companion. By participating in meaning making and interpretation, readers gain new perceptions of self, nature, and society, and develop critical reflections to challenge pressing issues such as social injustice, environmental sustainability, and technology’s shaping impacts. A thought-provoking read for those interested in systems theory, anthropology, health psychology, neuroscience, and ecology, this practice-led and autoethnographic work opens new paths to possibility studies and creative research.
