Search

A set of prominent designers embarked on a research journey to explore aesthetics in movement-based design. Here we unpack one of the design sensitivities unique to our practice: A strong first person perspective-where the movements, somatics and aesthetic sensibilities of the designer, design researcher and user are at the forefront. We present an annotated portfolio of design exemplars and a brief introduction to some of the design methods and theory we use, together substantiating and explaining the first-person perspective. At the same time, we show how this felt dimension, despite its subjective nature, is what provides rigor and structure to our design research. Our aim is to assist researchers in soma-based design and designers wanting to consider the multiple facets when designing for the aesthetics of movement. The applications span a large field of designs, including slow introspective, contemplative interactions, arts, dance, health applications, games, work applications and many others.

Movement-based interaction design is increasingly popular, with application domains ranging from dance, sport, gaming to physical rehabilitation. In a workshop at CHI 2016, a set of prominent artists, game designers, and interaction designers embarked on a research journey to explore what we came to refer to as "aesthetics in soma-based design". In this follow-up workshop, we would like to take the next step, shifting from discussing the philosophical underpinnings we draw upon to explain and substantiate our practice, to form our own interaction design theory and conceptualisations. We propose that soma-based design theory needs practical, pragmatic as well as analytical study - otherwise the felt dimension will be missing. We will consider how such tacit knowledge can be articulated, documented and shared. To ground the discussion firmly in the felt experience of our own practice, the workshop is organised as a joint practical design work session, supported by analytical study., QC 20170626

Movement-based design is reaching critical mass in HCI, and we can start to identify strategies, similarities and differences in how it is approached. Similarities may include, for example, a strong first person perspective on design, emphasising movement, somatics and aesthetic sensibilities of the designer, as well as starting from the premise that our bodily ways of being in the world are shaped by the ecologies of people, cultural practices and the artefacts we create and use. Different classes of systems are starting to emerge, such as spurring somaesthetic appreciation processes using biofeedback loops or carefully nudging us to interact with our own movements; engaging us in affective loops where the technology takes on a stronger agency, attempting to pull participants into particular experiences; extending on our senses and perception - even creating new senses through technology; social interactions, engaging us to jointly explore movement or touch; even endowing machines with their own 'somatics', exploring our relationship to technology; as well as engaging in larger political issues around the body, such as gender perspectives, or challenging the mind-body divide., Conference code: 121620; Export Date: 22 May 2017; Conference Paper. QC 20170607

Experimental art deployed in the Augmented Reality (AR) medium is contributing to a reconfiguration of traditional perceptions of interface, audience participation, and perceptual experience. Artists, critical engineers, and programmers, have developed AR in an experimental topology that diverges from both industrial and commercial uses of the medium. In a general technical sense, AR is considered as primarily an information overlay, a datafied window that situates virtual information in the physical world. In contradistinction, AR as experimental art practice activates critical inquiry, collective participation, and multimodal perception. As an emergent hybrid form that challenges and extends already established 'fine art' categories, augmented reality art deployed on Portable Media Devices (PMD’s) such as tablets & smartphones fundamentally eschews models found in the conventional 'art world.' It should not, however, be considered as inscribing a new 'model:' rather, this paper posits that the unique hybrids advanced by mobile augmented reality art–– also known as AR(t)–– are closely related to the notion of the 'machinic assemblage' ( Deleuze & Guattari 1987), where a deep capacity to re-assemble marks each new art- event. This paper develops a new formulation, the 'software assemblage,’ to explore some of the unique mixed reality situations that AR(t) has set in motion.

The collaborative process is central to dance practice, as is the desire to engage both somatically and conceptually with frameworks beyond the body/self. This paper proposes a framework of ‘ex-quiry’ to describe this process in contemporary dance practice. We draw both on the long history of external frameworks in dance practice, and upon new experimental opportunities for ‘ex-quiry’ provided by digital technologies such as an artificially intelligent performance agent. The concept ‘ex-quiry’, has been articulated within a series of solo practices by Australian dance artist, Steph Hutchison.

For a Digital Performing Agent to be able to perform live with a human dancer, it would be useful for the agent to be able to contextualize the movement the dancer is performing and to have a suitable movement vocabulary with which to contribute to the performance. In this paper we will discuss our research into the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) as a means of allowing a software agent to learn a shared vocabulary of movement from a dancer. The agent is able to use the learnt movements to form an internal representation of what the dancer is performing, allowing it to follow the dancer, generate movement sequences based on the dancer's current movement and dance independently of the dancer using a shared movement vocabulary. By combining the ANN with a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) the agent is able to recognize short full body movement phrases and respond when the dancer performs these phrases. We consider the relationship between the dancer and agent as a means of supporting the agent's learning and performance, rather than developing the agent's capability in a self-contained fashion.

We have developed a set of small interactive throw pillows containing intelligent touch-sensing surfaces, in order to explore new ways to model the environment, participants, artefacts, and their interactions, in the context of expressive non-verbal interaction. We present the overall architecture of the environment, describing a model of the user, the interface (the interactive pillows and the devices it can interact with) and the context engine. We describe the representation and process modules of the context engine and demonstrate how they support real-time adaptation. We present an evaluation of the current prototype and conclude with plans for future work.