Garth asked a great question today, in relation to the question of our respective desires for the project: not sure exactly what he said – but it was something like – ‘How do we (as interaction designers) get to experience through touch?’

How do we get to experience through the touch we facilitate as makers in responsive electronic art systems? This translated into pragmatic questions around how do we, as makers of senor-based works, get at the processes happening during a tactile,intimate encounter, such as provided during a somatic bodywork session (i.e. the Feldenkrais hands-on work known as Functional Integration). Many of us are hoping that Catherine and Maggie will be able to help shine some light on this – one way or another.

For me this was one of the core motivations behind the development of the TTTB concept in 2006 – so important because its still so relatively unknown.

So what then of the pragmatics? Some areas that strike me as good starting points would be to compile an inventory of fundamental structures and life skills developed during infancy and early childhood: those basic reflexes and motor skills that underpin our ability to sense and act in the world – orienting our selves to the world/self, finding stability, responding to novelty/threat etc. My first experience of Feldenkrais Functional Integration started with a lesson on falling: I was asked to explore ways of falling, and see if I could find a way of falling that felt easy, soft and enjoyable – which seemed odd at first – since I had come because of a problem I was having with abdominal tension. What surprised me was how such a simple process – falling repeatedly – could reverberate so intensely at a much more personal level.

Its this capacity for body-focussed experiences to elicit intense personal realizations that is compelling me towards research into this area of touch and movement sensation

I enjoyed working with Lizzie’s methodology today – seeking to better understand the process of audience engagement.  It was interesting to think about why interactive New Media Art requires so much information about the artists intention?  Why is it necessary to prescribe the manner of engagement? is it because the genre is so new that the collective conscious has not yet “embodied” affordances associated with interactive New Media Art (NMA).  For instance it is not necessary when performing a musical concert on a guitar, cello, piano etc to begin by telling the audience how the instrument is made, the mechanisms it contains for making sound and the performance techniques that are going to be brought to bear in generating the musical outcomes.

So, are the words of the artist interventionist?  Are they establishing constraints that lead to a constructed experience that coalesces with or is dictated by the artists stated intention?  Can self-reporting have validity in this situation where the audience has been pre-conditioned by the artists statement?

Given this, does the value of interactive NMA really reside in the personification of experience and not in the physicality and technological wizardryof the installation.  Part of the question we addressed today then is that the value of this experience needs to be reflected in archival material.  How does one reflect on an artwork where by the principle value of the work is in individual experience and not in a tangible object, but in a personal agency

corporeal, material, objective, phenomenal, sensible, substantial, tangible

Notions of corporial experience and distributed consciousness are of particular interest to me – how can we sense these things in a meaningful manner using technology so that we might be able to utilise that data in the generation of realtime sonification and visualisation in the context of an art installation?

Cheer, garth

I would be quite interested to explore the use of thermal imaging as one way of gathering somatic responses in a public installation.

Possible sources for such technologies include:

1. Infratech cameras for medicine
2. Wikipedia on Thermography

cheers,  garth

One thing that resonates from this first workshop is the refreshing openness and intimacy of everyone here. An openness to listen, a willingness to share. The focus on the body perhaps supports this.

One thing that I desire is to make things in the weave and wash of stirring, inspiring conversations. To shift from a focus on the development of design methods and tools, to the application of these methods and tools, together with the methods and skills of others in the project, in the production of an actual interactive work. Or should I say, experimental prototypes! Or perhaps new ways of working to produce such things. I do desire that new spaces are created that draw out and seduce us into more playful, curious and novel ways of moving … that bring an aliveness to our everyday existence.

One thing that I can offer to the group is the ability to mediate between the danced, the felt and the designed. This is an ability that I am still in the process of cultivating. In my design research practice, I am interested in ways of traversing between the felt, experience (particularly of movement) and ways of representing movement that can act as resources for design. Some of the methods and tools I work with include movement-oriented personas and scenarios, Laban floor plans for representing spatial trajectories of people, scenario enactment and movement improvisation scores for prototype and user testing. I am especially interested in the creative potential of the moving body and how we can generate design ideas and concepts from the experiential, moving body. The notion of making strange with the moving body is one approach that demands we interrogate our assumptions about our bodies in movement through a range of movement-based techniques.

Thought this report on BioFeedback apparel might be of interest. Interfaces for biological sensing in art.

The above video interview with Sean Montgomery was recorded at the recent Last HOPE conference where Mr. Montgomery exhibited his line of ‘Vital Threads’ projects.

I have also been using some of the Infusion Systems wireless biosensing systems on another performance project with Hellen Sky.

I thought this links might be of interest: Here is a new MoCAP system that does not use markers on the body – this seems to me to be a revolution in unencumbered motion capture. 

I saw this system at the Organic Motion HQ in NYC last year and was very impressed at the responsiveness  and speed with which it computer the body form within it.Here are some video examples of it in action  Organic Motion data samples and also some discussion of the  biomechanical motion analysis interface 

Optitrack make a cost effective MoCAP system that seems to be reliable and robust, and is portable so makes more sense than say a VICON system for use with dancers in a theatre and for touring a show.

MoCAP example using Optitrack – thought this might be of interest in thinking about what is missing given our Feldenkrais work. 

Thinking Through the Body is an interactive art research network exploring body-focussed interactions in art, design and arts-in-health.

The project brings together practitioners working across the fields of body-focussed art, interactive art, interaction design and somatic body work, to explore new approaches to how we can work with the body in interactive arts and design practice.

Specific areas of interest include the use of touch, movement and proprioception – modalities foregrounded in somatic bodywork practices such as the Feldenkrais Method, Alexander Technique and Body-Mind Centering.

Above all, as the project producer and co-curator (with Lizzie Muller), I’m interested in experience-centered approaches to the use of these modes in interactive art and design – emphasizing the role and affordances of the living (physiologically embodied) subject, and a more detailed examination of experience-in-interaction.

The research concept arose in response to the Australia Council for the Arts, Inter-Arts Office 2008 ‘Art Lab‘ grant. We begin our first workshop at the Campbelltown Arts Centre in August 14th 2008.