Designing for Kinesthetic Awareness

Abstract

We consider kinesthetic awareness, the perception of our own body position and movement in space, as a critical value for embodied design within third wave HCI. We designed an interactive sound installation that supports kinesthetic awareness of a participant's micro-movements. The installation's interaction design uses continuous auditory feedback and leverages an adaptive mapping strategy, refining its sensitivity to increase sonic resolution at lower levels of movement activity. The installation uses field recordings as rich source materials to generate a sound environment that attunes to a participant's micro-movements. Through a qualitative study using a second-person interview technique, we gained nuanced insights into the participants' subjective experiences of the installation. These reveal consistent temporal patterns, as participants build on a gradual process of integration to increase the complexity and capacity of their kinesthetic awareness during interaction.

SoniBand: Understanding the Effects of Metaphorical Movement Sonifications on Body Perception and Physical Activity

“…These results align with somatic literature in HCI (e.g., [8,15]) in illustrating that movement and subjective experience intertwine. Our movement is at the core of, and shapes, our subjective experience of the world [15]; and interactive technology has potential to support and affect people's own bodily understanding [8,15]. In that light, our findings corroborate that our metaphorical sonifications enhanced the participants' sensory appreciation of their own body: their…”

“…proprioception and body focus [8,15]. These findings are in line with other, artistic-focused, somatic works (e.g., [8]), in which providing a non-prescriptive, augmented feedback modality (sound) enabled participants to make sense of their own bodily experience. Despite the inherent subjectivity in movement experiences, our results show that participants individually came up with similar use strategies of the sonifications (e.g., pacing themselves, gauging start and end of movement); and experienced similar effects (feeling the sounds offered a guide on the movement).…”

“…The novelty of our work lies in the use of metaphorical sonifications to address negative/distorted body perceptions in the context of PA [3]. Prior works have used sonification to lead or help body movement (e.g., for informing and guiding movement) in the context of rehabilitation or sports (e.g., [38]), or to enhance body awareness in the context of movement exploration or art (e.g., [8]), without looking into body perceptions. Prior work addressing negative body perceptions has been quantitative, in the form of controlled laboratory studies [18].…”

“…Personally rewarding: sounds that were perceived to be such positively impacted the participant's willingness and ability to finish the set of repetitions of the exercise, as well as to do more repetitions [24,38]. proprioception and body focus [8,15]. These findings are in line with other, artistic-focused, somatic works (e.g., [8]), in which providing a non-prescriptive, augmented feedback modality (sound) enabled participants to make sense of their own bodily experience.…”

How Do Dancers Learn To Dance?

“…She takes the example of a dancer, and shows how she guided her step by step through the description of what she had done and experienced during a dance practice. Also based on Vermersch's technique, Françoise et al collected unique experiences and detailed insights of singular body experiences in dance exploration sessions [13].…”