BA Honours Film (2019), Bournemouth University| Master of Letters Film Studies (2020), University of St Andrews |frieda.gerhardt@plymouth.ac.uk

Frieda ‘Free’ Gerhardt (she/her/they/them) is a trained graphic designer and photographer, a visual artist and experimental documentary filmmaker. Their research circles all things sensory, from practical filmmaking to early film-philosophy, especially in its attention to the power of the medium to render things hitherto unseen visible. Further, philosophical theories about art, society, experience and being (i.e. (micro-) phenomenology), where a special interest is finding practical applications in unlikely places. For instance, in the earliest experiments with film in the natural sciences, as seen in their MLitt Dissertation: “Through the Sensory Lens: [Early] Popular Science Film and the Microscopic Universe”.

Now a Practice-as-Research PhD candidate in Art, Technology and Health, Free’s project (provisionally) entitled “Experienceable Neurodiversity: or Film’s potential to render diverse experiences of sensory perception“, is supervised by Professor Michael Punt (DoS) and Dr Heidi Morstang, along with Dr Hannah Drayson and Dr Nick Peres (Doctorate Advisor).

The project involves the rendering of Neurodiverse experiences of sensory perception through experimental filmmaking practices. The term Neurodiversity is defined here as the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways, without there being one right way of thinking, learning, or behaving. This, above all, means that any variations from a notional norm are not viewed as deficits. Being a Practice-as-Research PhD, the project employs a multimethod research methodology, consisting of a process of practical film production set unto a firm theoretical – philosophical framework which is established through a bibliographical research of the relevant literature.