Who Controls Who? Embodied Control Within Human–Technology Choreographies

Abstract

In this article we explore issues of embodied control that relate to current and future technologies in which body movements function as an instrument of control. Instead of just seeing ourselves in control, it is time to consider how these technologies actually control our moving bodies and transform our lived spaces. By shifting the focus from devices to choreographies among devices, we perform a theoretical analysis of the multidimensional aspects that reside within embodied interaction with technology. We suggest that it is beneficial to acknowledge and reformulate the phenomena of embodied control that go beyond the instrumental user-to-device control scheme. Drawing upon the phenomenology of the body, ecological psychology, and embodied cognitive science, we identify three different dimensions of embodied control: instrumental, experiential, and infrastructural. Design implications of this theoretical model are also discussed. Research highlights: • This paper clarifies the roles of technology and human beings in terms of movements and control: how we use movements in the control of technology, and reciprocally, how our movements are controlled by technology, thus constituting technology-induced choreographies. • The theoretical framework presented promotes the viewpoint of phenomenological philosophy on human-technology studies. This is done especially by treating movements as lived experiences that constitute humans as embodied beings. • The analysis of embodied control allows researchers and practitioners to be mindful in their visions and conceptualizations of body movement and control among different human-technology assemblages. • For HCI-related empirical research and practical design, this study formulates new ontological and epistemological groundings as well as new conceptual tools. • For interaction design, this paper underlines and illustrates the power and responsibilities embedded in developing instruments of control that contribute to choreographing human movements.

Understanding Human–Technology Relations Within Technologization and Appification of Musicality

“…123-124), designing of new musical instruments can as well be conceived the other way around. Indeed, action-sound relationships of musical interactions can also be used to deliberately persuade the player into making movement (see Bergsland and Wechsler, 2015), thus effectively generating bodily choreographies for playing (Tuuri et al, 2017). The designers of music apps have the opportunity to redefine the role of bodily activity and performativity of music-making.…”

“…In regard to education, a lot of discussion has emerged asking how technology has transformed, or will transform, the ways of teaching and learning (e.g., Gouzouasis and Bakan, 2011). In terms of musical activities, critical discussion has also been presented as to how technologies may enhance or degrade learning of "natural" musical skills, musicianship, or musical understanding (e.g., Aho, 2009;De Souza, 2017), or how they are able to transform people's embodied relationship with music (e.g., Leman and Nijs, 2017), even constituting bodily choreographies of musical activities (Tuuri et al, 2017).…”

Rituals and Machines: A Confucian Response to Technology-Driven Moral Deskilling

“…Furthermore, the Confucian response foregrounds the bodily-performative dimension in technologically mediated activities, as Confucian li aims to cultivate individuals' effortless and spontaneous reactions to everyday ethical encounters by refining and modulating their emotional and physical experience. Accordingly, in rethinking the technologically mediated activities, the bodily influences of technology, in particular the possibility of structuring bodily movements through technology design and use [40,41], and the affective influences from different technologies [42] will be explicitly considered in the Confucian response.…”

Effect of Instrument Structure Alterations on Violin Performance

“…In this paper, we seek to study the alteration of feedforward pathways: the transfer function between physical action and resulting sound. This transfer function is largely a function of the mechanical construction of the instrument, although its construction also changes what actions are suggested to the performer (Jack et al, 2017; Tuuri et al, 2017), such that the term “instrument” effectively signifies not only a mechanical object but a set of performance practices. For this section, however, we focus on the narrower point that changing the mechanical construction of the instrument alters its action-sound relationships and thereby potentially disrupts established sensorimotor learning that depends on those specific relationships.…”