Touching Our Breathing through Shape-Change: Monster, Organic Other, or Twisted Mirror

Abstract

We report on a soma design process, where we designed a novel shape-changing garment—the Soma Corset. The corset integrates sensing and actuation around the torso in tight interaction loops. The design process revealed how boundaries between the garment and the wearer can become blurred, leading to three flavours of cyborg relations. First, through the lens of the monster, we articulate how the wearer can adopt or reject the garment, resulting in either harmonious or disconcerting experiences of touch. Second, it can be experienced as an organic “other”-with its own agency-resulting in uncanny experiences of touch. Through mirroring the wearer’s breathing, the garment can also be experienced as a twisted version of one’s own body. We suggest that a gradual sensitisation of designers-through soma design and reflection on the emerging human-technology relations-may serve as a pathway for uncovering and articulating novel, machine-like, digital touch experiences.

Spooky Technology

“…We have avoided covering work explicitly framed as 'horror', and also-intriguing as the concept is-have not specifically adopted the 'monsters' lens as explored by researchers such as Karpashevich et al [63]. Blythe's [11] concept of 'overcoming monsters' as a metaphorical way of considering problems in HCI also felt out of scope for this work.…”

“…Trop es of 'tech nolog yas-m onste r' and 'over comi ng' mons ters [11] are oft used . As discu rsive fram es, Dove & Fayar d mate rializ e imag ined mons ters to explo re ML [39] while Karp ashev ich et al prob e a mons trous shapechan ging garm ent [63].…”

Shifting Design Perspectives: Touch, Co-Location, and Sharing Objects during the Pandemic

“…So I feel like we've, for the most part, like the couple friends that I've seen outside, we've had that same, like, awareness." (P14, age [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] This respondent, like many others, had an awareness about their friends' sense of "comfortable distance", and felt safe in a proximal space with friends who shared this same awareness. This example might demonstrate that people who prioritize safety are willing to gather with friends and family who display a congruent awareness about personal "bubbles".…”

“…I'm not sure." (P12, age [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] This respondent describes a sentiment shared by many that emerged when people entered public spaces and could not determine how safe each person was. The inability to assess the level of safety leads to new efforts to strategize how one could keep safe in a given situation ("where do I triangulate myself to be the furthest distance from, like all of them").…”

“…And not being able to do that has been really challenging." (Participant #8, age [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] In the United States, like in many countries, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted how people gather, communicate, and connect. This disruption is due to physical distancing measures enforced in early 2020 to reduce the spread of disease.…”