Closer

Abstract

As our computers become closer to our bodies, perspectives from phenomenology and dance can help us understand the wider social uses of digital technologies and design future technologies that expand our social, physical, and emotional exchanges. In Closer, Susan Kozel draws on live performance practice, digital technologies, and the philosophical approach of phenomenology. Trained in dance and philosophy, Kozel places the human body at the center of explorations of interactive interfaces, responsive systems, and affective computing, asking what can be discovered as we become closer to our computers—as they become extensions of our ways of thinking, moving, and touching. Performance, Kozel argues, can act as a catalyst for understanding wider social and cultural uses of digital technology. Taking this one step further, performative acts of sharing the body through our digital devices foster a collaborative construction of new physical states, levels of conscious awareness, and even ethics. We reencounter ourselves and others through our interactive computer systems. What we need now are conceptual and methodological frameworks to reflect this. Kozel offers a timely reworking of the phenomenology of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This method, based on a respect for lived experience, begins by listening to the senses and noting insights that arrive in the midst of dance, or quite simply in the midst of life. The combination of performance and phenomenology offered by Closer yields entwinements between experience and reflection that shed light on, problematize, or restructure scholarly approaches to human bodies using digital technologies. After outlining her approach and methodology and clarifying the key concepts of performance, technologies, and virtuality, Kozel applies phenomenological method to the experience of designing and performing in a range of computational systems: telematics, motion capture, responsive architectures, and wearable computing. The transformative potential of the alchemy between bodies and technologies is the foundation of Closer. With careful design, future generations of responsive systems and mobile devices can expand our social, physical, and emotional exchanges.

Filming Dance: Embodied Syntax in Sasha Waltz's S

“…Bodies are not neutral, and this, as Kozel points out with reference to Luce Irigaray's articulation of sexual difference, is not so much about 'maleness and femaleness as much as it is about allowing the embodied, material voice of an other to exist alongside dominant discourse and practices'. 34 Indeed, dancers can help 'make visible what was supposed to remain invisible according to a masculine logic'. 35 In S we see this in the way familiar stylized rituals are played out: one man (Millwood) tries to catch a woman (de Serpa Soares); she runs from him -he pursues her.…”

“…34 Indeed, dancers can help 'make visible what was supposed to remain invisible according to a masculine logic'. 35 In S we see this in the way familiar stylized rituals are played out: one man (Millwood) tries to catch a woman (de Serpa Soares); she runs from him -he pursues her. She smiles.…”

Between Life-World and Technical Systems: Dialectics in the Digital Locus

“…I give sense to the world and express it through my body. When it comes to my relation to digital media, there, as well, I express through my body a unique relation to the technical object, developing a specific corporeal scheme with the devices I use (Kozel, 2007). the expression, in this case, is not only the way I speak of a digital device, but also the way my body relates to it: for instance, the way I hold a mouse or how I type.…”

“…What is at the stake in these experiences is the lived world-the Lebenswelt, or the life-world experience. Such a phenomenological approach to ICts may open up new ways of revising methodologies, communication processes, information architectures, and even communications policies (see Ciborra, 2002Ciborra, , 2004Fay, Ilharco, & Introna, 2008;Ilharco, 2002;Josgrilberg, 2006;Kozel, 2007). the phenomenology of ICt is often neglected, however, as researchers tend to opt for discourse, critical, or systemic theories in their work.…”

En el umbral de Leopoldo Zea. Alberto Zum Felde: dramatismo ontológico de la conciencia y voluntad de ser en la incertidumbre de la entidad americana

“…Ardao, 1956 177178. Un trabajo de referencia para esta significativa tendencia intelectual, circunscripto a Argentina pero con posibles extensiones a América Latina es Kozel, 2008. Diagnóstico "del problema de nuestra cultura": la inautenticidad. Pro sigue Zum Felde en un diagnóstico "del problema de nuestra cultura": el adjetivo es desolado (1943: 28).…”