The PhD ‘In Search of a Body: The Somatisation of Digital Cultural Heritage’ is an investigation into embodied practice within digital cultural heritage. The ‘Temples’ of Mnajdra in South Malta are examined within a somatic framework of inquiry that draws on insights developed in interpretative archaeology into the embodied relationship between persons and the world.

Encounters between human movement and spatial structure are interrogated through phenomenologically informed analyses of the spatiotemporal characteristics of the Mnajdra site and environmental context. Spatial praxis and observation – moving through the landscape, witnessing at different times of the day and seasons, transportation and navigation – shed light on the social control of knowledge and ritual organisation. Performance and reenactment are indicated as critical in the formation of somatic knowledge about present and past human endeavour.

These experiential interpretations of the temples are critically synthesised and reconfigured in the design and production of Spaces of Mnajdra. Within a large-scale mixed reality environment, visitors are immersed in panoramic visualisations of the forecourt environment, internal chambers and artifacts. Motion-tracking and haptic technologies respond to visitors’ gestures to enable navigation between chambers and close observation of the temple building and artefacts during different eras.

Spaces of Mnajdra, establishes in-world situated presence, the sense of ‘being there’, of ‘another place’ through visitor engagement with the temples unique architecture structures and spatial enclosures. Encouragement of visitor movement based on visual, interactive and sonic stimuli create somatic forms of participation and a sensory awareness of the environment. In particular, the apprehension of movement and the registration of the temples’ morphology schema draw the past into the present and evoke kinaesthetic and sensory awareness of past cultural encounters.