Children’s Sensorium Castlemaine
Live Particle Soma Corner

TACTILE . KINAESTHETIC . relational . SONIC

Haptic Sculpture & Sonic Art Meets Embodied Practice

Made by Live Particle

This work features in the Children’s Sensorium at The Castlemaine Art Museum designed for children aged 4-11yrs. Our Soma Corner invites you to sense, touch, move, imagine, see and listen. You are encouraged to notice how tactile objects make you feel and what they lead you to next. It’s about becoming familiar with your embodiment through your senses. This happens via somatosensory play (sensing and perceiving). Engaging your senses in this way encourages creativity and agency and supports you to shift your mood and change your state. This can have positive effects on your wellbeing.

For the duration of the exhibition we are part of the public programmes. We are offering workshops full of personal and educational somatic strategies, and Sensorium spatial and conceptual activation.

Soma Tools, Soma Kits & Supersized Soma Scroll

Our Soma Tools, Soma Kits and Supersized Soma Scroll are composed of handmade and carefully chosen haptic and kinaesthetic objects. These operate as sensory invitations that encourage imaginative and freestyle play. The objects’ shape, scale, density, texture, colour, malleability, and how you move and interact with them, enlivens different aspects of you and informs your experience. Each object acts as a metaphor by referencing a system or organ within you like bones or connective tissue. The Soma Corner collection represents fundamental principles that inform your world such as scale, rhythm and duration. Learning about these principles and how they are already living systems within you is a powerful way to cultivate resilience and healthy living.

Stone: organs - density, weight, time
Soma Stick: bones - structure, resonance, locomotion
Fabric River: connective tissue - malleability, reciprocity, fluidity
Leather & Rope: ligaments - bonds, clarity, tensegrity
Supersized Soma Scroll: somatosensory system - scale, rhythm, tactility, patterns

Materials: Tea-tree wood, Greywacke stone, rawhide leather, upcycled lycra, t-shirt yarn, linen, velvet & cotton ribbon. Sustainably sourced and respectfully gathered.

Soma Score : VISUAL Guide

invitational . playful

Thanks to Taylor MalingSmith for performance

Mini A-boards with guided somatic experiences as image and words. Finding ways to encourage somatosensory exploration.

Soma score : Sonic Guide

Interactive . Poetic . evocative

Created in collaboration with Philip Samartzis

A sonic guided eco-somatic experience blending nature recordings and spoken word. It evokes the patterns of nature in your own body and how you might respond to natural elements through movement and imagination.

sensory play Resources
for home & School

Links to the Victorian Curriculum

Our somatic and arts-based resources are closely aligned to key capability areas of the Victorian Curriculum. Strategies support the development of personal and social capability as well as critical and creative thinking capability.

Personal and Social Capability
The Personal and Social Capability supports students in becoming creative and confident individuals with a sense of self-worth, self-awareness and personal identity. This enables them to manage their emotional, mental, spiritual and physical wellbeing, with a sense of hope and optimism about their lives and the future.

Critical and Creative Thinking Capability
Explicit attention to and application of thinking skills enables students to develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the processes they can employ whenever they encounter both the familiar and unfamiliar, to break ineffective habits and build on successful ones, building a capacity to manage their thinking. Developing critical and creative thinking capability is an essential element of developing successful, confident and innovative members of the community.