The dissertation studies experiments with the concept of the 'plastic' across art history, art practice, and artist writings, and attends to intersections in the way the concept has been used across the arts, philosophy, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. Typically understood as a designation for sculpture and three-dimensionality, as the capacity to shape or mold, to change, or to purify in a contrast of opposites, the 'plastic,' as well as its root terms (Greek, plastikós and plássein) and its derivatives ('plasticity' and 'plasticism') have a history of an abundance of uses revelatory of epochal shifts in human perception and in the ways bodies and objects interact.

In addition to providing a rigorous survey of the 'plastic,' the dissertation presents its own theory of the concept, combining historical writing and philosophical inquiry with art practice, digital humanities projects, and fellowship-supported research in human deep history with the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA). The dissertation practices being 'plastic' while being about the 'plastic.'

In Part One, writing moves from often-cited art historical references like artist-writer Piet Mondrian's essays on "neo-plasticism" (1918-20), to lesser-known theories like those elaborated in a dialogue on "plasticity" (1962-63) between artists Hollis Frampton and Carl Andre. It discusses the 'plastic' in evolutionary biology, emphasizing important distinctions between ecological plasticity in niche construction and neuro-plasticity in the brain sciences, and explores similar distinctions in the work of post-conceptual artists who have experimented with the "plastic" in their projects. In Part Two, a digital humanities tutorial in environmental psychology and urban design (PERP) demonstrates the 'plastic' at work in the traffic roundabout, with a focus on the roundabout as the principle site of Arab Spring protests.

Part Three concludes with the digital humanities core of the dissertation, RK-LOG, a serialized audio-drama of art historical ethno-fiction on 'plastic' perception in minimalist Donald Judd's The Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati (1981-86). Dissertation readers experience plastic thresholds by listening to the RK-LOG audio-drama online, or in a road-trip itinerary of the Presidio-Chihuahua borderlands. RK-LOG puts theories of the 'plastic' into practice, and in practice, re-conceptualizes the 'plastic.'

Philosopher Catherine Malabou claims that, "in art, (...) connotations of the term "plasticity" are always positive." The dissertation confirms this generalization but questions Malabou's assertion that "when it comes to the possibility of explosion, the annihilation of equilibrium, (...) no one calls it "plasticity" anymore." It responds to critiques of the "neuro-turn" in the humanities and suggests the next move in thinking about interactions among bodies, space and time is integrated art history and artistic research on the concept of the 'plastic' between 'plasticity' and 'plasticism.'