NEURODIVERGENT / DIGITAL ART

Inclination

Noun 1: a person’s natural tendency or urge to act, feel in a particular way; a disposition.

Digital Sculpture: 9 x .stl, 500mb (approx). Film: 9 x 120 sec, 4k, .mp4, Billboard Posters: 9 x (1x1.5m) Blue Backed Billboard Paper, 350gsm

In January 2026, DYSPLA worked with nine autistic students from Kings Park Newhaven School in Greenwich, funded by the Royal Borough of Greenwich.

They delivered digital technology with performance workshops and produced a series of physical and digital miniature sculptures with accompanying performance poetry.

These sculptures contain 3D printed poetry written and performed by each student, expressing their personal interpretation of the theme concept of ‘inclination’.

Through a series of conversations, students verbalized their ideas of inclination/choice, which was represented through poetic short-form text as having a physical, emotional, social, and sometimes overwhelming effect on their cognition.

‘Choice’ showed up poetically as ‘branches, rails, hangers, space, instinct, repetition, rebellion, embarrassment, control, paralysis, and freedom’ all at once.

For some of the students, ‘choice’ felt infinite, like ‘space’. Others described the conflict of choice when other people are in the mix. Endless possibilities felt ‘too much’, and ‘structure, sameness, or routine’ became ways to survive.

There’s a constant movement between wanting ‘freedom’ and wanting ‘limits’, between ‘impulse and self-control’, between doing what feels true and doing what is expected.

A lot of the thinking sits around authenticity and performance. Social filters, masking, bravado, humour, rebellion, “cringe”, and being deliberately embarrassing all appear as ways of reacting to pressure and expectation.

Choice is not just internal but shaped by power, by other people, and by who gets to interpret or interrupt your decisions. Choices don’t just belong to us; we make them for other people, too.

“I make choices based on other people’s happiness; I make choices based on their growth,” said one of our young participants.

Some conversations drifted into topics of nature and instinct, animals and survival, calm, snow, and space, while others stayed with social identity, behaviour, and the tension between who you are to yourself and who you appear to be to others.

Overall, the discussions, the poetry, the performance, and the poses created for the digital miniature sculptures all felt like a constellation of voices and ideas, orbiting the same question:

What does it actually mean to choose when choice is filtered through feeling, difference, control, fear, desire, appearance and the presence of other people?

For more information, please visit: **https://dyspla.com/inclination-1**

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