We’re delighted to announce that project Twist, Shit, and Shake (TSxS) has been selected for funding by the FWF Emerging Fields program!

The Emerging Fields program of the Austrian Science Fund FWF supports teams of outstanding researchers pursuing pioneering basic research that deliberately departs from established approaches. It is designed to enable particularly high-risk ideas with the potential to trigger paradigm shifts within or across scientific fields. The program is specifically encouraging interdisciplinary collaborations, arts-based research using aesthetic or artistic methods, and transdisciplinary projects involving non-academic participants.

One of the projects that was selected is Twist, Shift and Shake (TSxS), with Katta Spiel from TU Wien Informatics as a key researcher. The other primary researchers are Florian Sametinger, who serves as coordinator, together with Elke Bachlmair, Karin Harrasser, Martin Kaltenbrunner, and Mario Zeppetzauer, all from the University of Arts Linz. The project has a total funding volume of €6.1 million, with €1.4 million allocated to TU Wien, and a duration of five years.

TSxS proposes a multidisciplinary, interuniversity research platform that challenges reductionist and ableist assumptions about sensory perception and bodily ability in design and the arts. Through co-research and co-creation with people of diverse abilities, the project aims to rethink design and artistic practice as political practices of care, generating new cultural and academic knowledge while promoting a paradigm of “diversabilities.” The program is grounded in the view that sensory perception and bodily abilities are inherently diverse, multimodal, and shaped by cultural norms that often produce disability through exclusionary design. Its objectives include creating innovative works of art and design, developing inclusive research and design methods, and establishing sustainable infrastructures and networks for collaboration. Research will take place across four interdisciplinary labs, and combines methods from Cultural Studies (historical case-studies, participatory research, discourse analysis) with creative and design methodology (speculative design methods, prototyping) for mixed-abled groups, while actively engaging artists, co-researchers with diverse abilities, and partners from industry, activism, and the arts through participatory, speculative, and open-design approaches.

Congratulations, Katta Spiel, Florian Sametinger, Karin Harrasser, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Mario Zeppetzauer, and Elke Bachlmair, on this extraordinary achievement!

About Katta Spiel

Katta Spiel is an Assistant Professor for Critical Access in Embodied Computing at TU Wien Informatics. They research marginalized perspectives on embodied computing through a lens of Critical Access. Their work informs design and engineering, supporting the development of technologies that account for the diverse realities they operate in. In their interdisciplinary collaborations with neurodivergent and/or nonbinary peers, they conduct explorations of novel potentials for designs, methodologies, and innovative technological artifacts. They received their PhD in 2018 from TU Wien and, after a year at KU Leuven, conducted postdoctoral research as an FWF-Hertha Firnberg Scholar, also at TU Wien. Their work has received several international and national awards, including the SICGHI 2020 Outstanding Dissertation Award and the Förderungspreis der Stadt Wien in der Sparte Mathematik, Informatik, Naturwissenschaft, Technik in 2022.

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