#embodied interaction

"In the end, it’s probably not humans that should get more technical. It’s technology that should get more human.” - Fabian Hemmert

Digital media and interactive technologies provide the opportunity to augment and alter the characteristic qualities of sensual and aesthetic perception. In this paper we are investigating the influence of an interactive “skin”- prototype on the human touch perception in the architectonical context.

Author: Ingrid Maria Pohl, University of Technology Graz, Austria

Abstract: Digital media and interactive technologies provide the opportunity to augment and alter the characteristic qualities of sensual and aesthetic perception. The visual and auditory senses are culturally predominant, but nevertheless the sense of touch receives nowadays increasing attention. This paper presents the perceptive potentials of touch sensations and their influences on our emotions. We will discuss how we can take advantage of these potentials using digital media and technology and how touch stimuli are forming aesthetic experiences. In this paper we are investigating the influence of an interactive “skin”- prototype on the human touch perception in the architectonical context.

Keywords: sense of touch; perception; interactivity; augmented architecture

This dissertation represents a systematic investigation of the poetic valence of body-worn technological extension. Gestural, mechanical and sensorial extension are explored and evaluated.

Author: Danielle Wilde, Monash University, Melbourne Australia.

Access the full dissertation here.

Abstract: Swing That Thing: moving to move represents a systematic investigation of the poetic valence of body-worn technological extension. Gestural, mechanical and sensorial extension are explored and evaluated. The impact of different choices throughout the development process are considered, and theories relating to language, movement and cognition, as well as defamiliarisation and enchantment are leant upon to arrive at an emergent definition of a poetics of embodied engagement. Focusing on the body and its capacity for movement opens up opportunities to develop deeply felt experiences that take us far beyond pragmatic considerations of functionality or practicality. Pairing technology with the body is not new. Yet embodied engagement has only recently emerged as a field of interest in its own right, despite the fact that moving is central to life. Humour, passion and empathy are desirable attributes through which to engage people. Through the praxis I demonstrate that core- and full-body engagement in ambiguous and playful situations, assist designer and participant to arrive at deeply felt understandings of embodied existence, and thereby re-imagine body-technology scenarios to mitigate unmet desires. This research champions a number of key ideas. If we engage the body through the imagination and the imagination through the body, we can blur distinctions between art and everyday life. Doing so may result in transformative outcomes in contexts that are not usually considered cultural. By beginning with the body, rather than a perceived opportunity to redesign and thereby improve, I have been able to develop systems and processes that afford clumsy, as well as skilled engagement. Participation has thereby been democratized. The results are artefacts and opportunities for embodied engagement in cultural contexts, as well as in abilitation and learning.

Our findings illustrate how users adapt their behaviour as co-ordination problems occur by drawing from a set of everyday visual practices and how the specifically temporal aspect of live video requires extended attention on its production, and that this is at odds with the ‘recreational orientation’ of amateur film crews who simultaneously participate in events for their own enjoyment and film them on behalf of other viewers.

Abstract We explore the use of a live video broadcast system by a group of collaborating amateur camera operators to film an event on networked cameraphones. Using a detailed interaction analysis of their physical interactions and orientations to the work of others, we examine their choice of  camera angles and positions in their filming as they attempt to provide interesting visual content and a coherent narrative. Our findings illustrate how users adapt their behaviour as co-ordination problems occur by drawing from a set of everyday visual practices (‘amateur vision’). The findings also show how the specifically temporal aspect of live video requires extended attention on its production, and that this is at odds with the ‘recreational orientation’ of amateur film crews who simultaneously participate in events for their own enjoyment and film them on behalf of other viewers. Implications  for  the  design  of collaborative live broadcast media are made, focusing on approaches to interaction design that augment users’ visual practices and allow  users  to  look  on  behalf  of  others  while experiencing places and events themselves.

Author Keywords: Collaboration, user-generated content, broadcast, live video, embodied interaction, leisure, amateur, professional

A colleague recently tweeted a link to a Science Daily article entitled, "How do people respond to being touched by a robotic nurse?"

I'm inclined to cite Dourish as a kind of gentle critique to the hopes and anticipation associated with robotic medical care:

"...a disembodied brain could not experience the world in the same ways that we do, because our experience of the world is intimately tied to the ways in which we act in it. Physically, our experiences cannot be separated from the reality of our bodily presence in the world; and socially, too, the same relationship holds because our nature as social beings is based on the ways in which we act and interact, in real time, all the time.

A conversation between two people is shaped in response to the moment rather than abstractly planned..."

Shortcuts: a visualization of interactive processes (via ilanapaterman)

A nice visualization technique for highlighting the physical actions one takes when doing everyday tasks.