This practice-led project investigates the ubiquitous but invisible space between the maker and the made in the performance of making, and engages in an heuristic methodology to examine how the body experiences this space. This is underpinned by an examination of a phenomenological approach to lived experience, embodiment and the epistemology of empirical knowledge.

This practice-led project explores the relationship between the researcher’s body as maker and handspun textiles as the made. Although the performance of making is cognitive in its practice, this project also explores the techniques of spinning’s articulated performance in the space of making to explore repetition, ritual and gesture.

This exploration identifies the space between the maker and the made as experiential and as a conversation between the body, material and tools, as well as kinaesthesia, auditory and haptic perception. This space also reveals a transformation of body and perceptive components by way of embodied action, sensorimotor engagement and spatial awareness. This established a role for the body in the building of knowledge during the creative process and adds to the ongoing discussion into the phenomenological approach to body and knowledge through creative process.