Research Focus of AUMI-KU Interarts

Much of the work done with the AUMI shows how the instrument allows users to move past medical and therapeutic models of disability and toward artistic practice that does not discriminate according to ability. Thus far, the possible uses of the AUMI have been focused on technology and education, but creative research needs to be done to explore the potential for further artistic development. The researchers of AUMI-KU InterArts are interested in how intersections of bodies with expansive and limited and various ranges of voluntary mobility and cognitive processes create a new space to imagine identities and communities that substantively reconfigure difference as generative. We are also interested in what types of new languages are developed by users and the witnesses of AUMI performers that can help us understand difference in more complex ways.

To explore these issues, the primary goal of AUMI-KU InterArts is to facilitate exchange across perceptual, mobile, and cognitive differences through creative artistic practices like musical improvisation and composition, dance, theater, and visual arts. Another goal is to partner with local groups interested in participating in a study of community-formation using AUMI and free improvisation.