The complexity of contemporary challenges demands collaborative, interdisciplinaryforms of knowledge production capable of integrating multiple ways of knowing. Yet thedominant research model brackets the conditions that make genuine collective inquirypossible — the quality of presence, the relational ground, the somatic attunement thatbuilds trust and collective intelligence. This paper presents a methodological prototypethat both implements and measures these conditions, drawing on two Social PresencingTheater practices: the Stuck practice as a daily somatic check-in buildinginter-researcher attunement, and 3D mapping as a collaborative material practice forproject development and field sensing. Two researchers integrated both practices intoan ongoing project on aesthetic sustainability and embodied learning in design. Resultsshow statistically traceable change: posture shifts significantly toward openness withineach session (p = 0.012), entry posture orientation shifts progressively inward acrossthe research arc (p = 0.02–0.03), trust-coded language increases significantly after eachpractice (p = 0.023), and the affective valence of entry postures shifts from negative topositive over time. A compensatory within-session dynamic is also identified: thepractice orients toward the affective quality latent in the entry posture rather thanamplifying what is already present. Situated within the science of the social field andawareness-based design, we propose this prototype as a contribution to a knowledgeproduction that values the quality of the process — the relational ground, the somaticattunement, the container built between researchers — as much as the outcomes itgenerates.
Massacrier et al. (Sat,) studied this question.