Nano-art, dynamic matter and the sight/sound of touch

- Examining nano art we discuss the geographical imaginaries of touch and its immersive geographies.
- Critiquing nano-art we consider the inter-relations of touch with hearing.
- Using nano-art we explore dynamic matter and the mingling of bodies and worlds.
- Exploring nano art we reflect on the import of the nano, and its imaginaries, for geography.

This paper offers an auto-ethnographic account of Midas, an immersive bio-media installation created by artist Paul Thomas. The experiences of the installation provide a stepping-off point for a discussion of the corporeal geographies and the nano-imaginaries that the work develops. Understanding the senses as a principle means whereby the body mingles with the world and with itself, we begin from a focus on Midas's presentation of the inter-relations of touch, vision and hearing, thereby extending geographical thinking on aurality, but also reworking the immersive geographies that are implicated within ontologies of touch. We draw out these geographies by way of the depths and passages of Irigaray's (1993) fluid ontology of touch. From here we explore the 'creative rethinking' of matter that the installation develops, exploring the organismic topographies that it develops which stand against nano-imaginaries of matter that are focused either on the corporeal violence of nano-splatter, or the understanding of nanotechnologies through the mastery and control of matter.