Soma Design and Politics of the Body: Addressing Conceptual Dichotomies Through Somatic Engagement

Kristina Höök (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
Sara Eriksson (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
Marianela Ciolfi Felice (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
Nadia Campo Woytuk (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
Özgün Kilic (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
Vasiliki Tsaknaki (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
Anna Ståhl (RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Sweden)

Human reasoning often revolves around dichotomies: male-female, rational-irrational, emotion-thinking, body-mind, white-black, and so on. Through our design processes, we often repeat and reinforce these patterns. We argue that a stronger somatic engagement with the digital materials might open the design space in different manners, thereby bypassing some of these ready-made conceptualizations. Through a soma design stance we have attempted to address: dualism; feminist qualities such as pluralism and participation; addressing and counteracting privilege; and how to get closer to our bodies and our selves instead of letting data and interaction distance ourselves from our bodies, emotion, and experience.

Citation

Kristina Höök, Sara Eriksson, Marie Louise Juul Sondergaard, Marianela Ciolfi Felice, Nadia Campo Woytuk, Ozgun Kilic, Vasiliki Tsaknaki, and Anna Ståhl. 2019. Soma Design and Politics of the Body: Addressing Conceptual Dichotomies Through Somatic Engagement. In Proceedings of the Halfway to the Future Symposium 2019 (HTTF 2019), November 19–20, 2019, Nottingham, United Kingdom. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 8 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3363384.3363385

With thanks to our sponsors:

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With thanks to our sponsors:

University of Nottingham logo

SIGCHI logo

Microsoft logo