about the project
SENSING LIVING SYSTEMS is an interdisciplinary art-based research project exploring how we can better understand – and more importantly, resonate with – living systems.
We are all living systems embedded in other living systems: our bodies that carry us, the relationships we build, the ecosystems we are part of, the cities we explore, and the societies we shape. They are made up of many interconnected parts that are constantly adapting, evolving, and responding to their surroundings. To address the urgent challenges of our time – such as climate change, inequality, and technological disruption – we need a deeper awareness of these complex interdependencies.
The project was initiated by the artist and researcher duo MUELLER-DIVJAK (Jeanette Müller & Paul Divjak) and is based at the Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab (AIL) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, under the direction of Alexandra Graupner. Together with international artists, systems scientists, and collaborators from Europe, Southeast Asia, and the US, we develop multi-sensory scenographic installations, performances, and participatory formats that translate abstract systems thinking into tangible sensory experiences – especially through smell, sound, and touch.
The aim is to foster systems awareness – a way of perceiving systems not only through analytical thought but through embodied experience. The project is grounded in General Systems Theory (GST) by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, which sees systems as more than the sum of their parts and emphasizes relationships and interaction with the environment.
SENSING LIVING SYSTEMS expands the field of scenography as a method for artistic research and transformative education. It offers a sensory approach to understanding complexity and encourages participants to explore their own role as living systems within larger living systems. In doing so, it contributes to broader efforts toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by promoting systems thinking, sensing, and collaboration.
Installations and activities developed within the project are mobile and adaptable, designed for a wide range of people – where participation plays a key role within the project: Personal perception is treated as valuable expertise, and each experience becomes part of an ongoing dialogue between art, science, and society.
Ultimately, the project invites all of us to sense the world more deeply, to recognize our embeddedness in living systems – and to imagine how this systems awareness might guide us toward more sustainable, resilient, and connected ways of being.
Alexandra Graupner, head of Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab, is the project manager, drawing on her experience in the conception and implementation of interdisciplinary, artistic projects with experimental processes leading to unexpected outcomes.
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