Crafting the Body-Tool: A Body-Centred Perspective on Wearable Technology

Crafting the Body-Tool: A Body-Centred Perspective on Wearable Technology

Claudia Nunez-Pacheco University of Sydney

148 City Road University of Sydney

NSW Australia [email protected]

Lian Loke University of Sydney

148 City Road University of Sydney

NSW Australia [email protected]

ABSTRACT Wearable technology brings computation in intimate proximity to the body, raising questions about the role of the body in interacting with tools. The disappearance of self and technology in achieving transparent and skilful action – the ideal aspiration of ubiquitous and context-aware computing – overlooks the potential of self-awareness as a critical resource for interactive experiences grounded in the body. We propose a body-centred perspective on wearable technology informed by phenomenological theories on the body-tool relationship and pragmatist Somaesthetics prioritising the cultivation of the self through somatic awareness for improved life quality. We extend Heidegger’s concept of present-at-hand with a new concept of present-at-body, defined as the reflective use of tools for developing bodily self-awareness. In our body-centred approach to wearable technology, we emphasise the dynamic interplay between visibility and transparency of body and tool as a fundamental resource for learning and self-development.

Author Keywords Body; body-aware; context-aware; disappearance; felt sense; self-awareness; somatic; somaesthetics; tool; wearable technology.

ACM Classification Keywords H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous.

INTRODUCTION The symbiotic nature of body and environment becomes more evident through the ubiquitousness of technology. Wearable technology, in particular, heightens and brings attention to the mutual shaping of body, environment and tools. Acting as the interface between our public and private

world, clothing [16, 27], and by extension wearable technology [27], has the potential to amplify and shape our perceptual phenomena in dynamic manners that emerge from the inner dimensions of our being in the world. By the use of sensors and actuators embedded in our garments and wearable devices, previously private physiological data can be aesthetically displayed, creating extended alternatives to experience ourselves in the world and communicate to others.

Wearable technology brings computation in intimate proximity to the body, raising questions about the role of the body in interacting with tools. The disappearance of self and technology in achieving transparent and skilful action – the ideal aspiration of ubiquitous computing – overlooks the potential of self-awareness as a critical resource for interactive experiences grounded in the body. The influence of Heidegger's theory of perception as action and particularly his ideas regarding tool handling in human-computer interaction (HCI), has prioritised the disappearance of interactive systems in the context of use, so that the user can focus on the task and not the tool [2, 21, 31, 32, 34, 36]. The tool – and the user – effectively disappears. But when the body and awareness of self become the central point of interest in technology design, these concepts become problematic.

We ask, what happens to the body – or our self-awareness of the body – while interacting with wearable technology that aims for self-exploration and learning? When does the body become present or transparent in interacting with tools? How can we proactively use body awareness as a primary resource for self-use and self-development in wearable technology design?

The Embodied Interaction agenda proposed by Dourish [2] drew on phenomenological accounts of embodiment to place emphasis on meaning as arising in interaction within a situation for tangible and social computing. Yet as previously critiqued by other researchers and ourselves (e.g., [9, 11, 15, 20, 22, 23, 25, 30, 33]), the role of the body in interactive experience is a critical issue that has received less attention until late under the embodied interaction approach, by being predominantly focused on perception as action – and less on self-perception.

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Body Interaction DIS 2014, June 21–25, 2014, Vancouver, BC, Canada

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We propose a body-centred perspective on wearable technology informed by phenomenological theories on the body-tool relationship and pragmatist Somaesthetics prioritising the cultivation of the self through somatic awareness for improved life quality. Our proposal is influenced by three main sources. Firstly, Dreyfus’ [4] interpretation of Heidegger and his theory of tool handling will assist our grasping of concepts such as transparency, disappearance and self-awareness. How the body disappears from conscious awareness in everyday acts is further elaborated by Leder’s [10] account of the absent body. Secondly, Gendlin’s [8] phenomenological approach that advocates for the primacy of body over perception, influences our proposal by conceiving the body as more than a mere perceiver or intermediary of the external. The felt sense, the ability of the body to know its situation prior to rational thinking, promotes the use of bodily self-awareness as a critical resource for interactive experiences grounded in the body [7]. The final source is Shusterman’s pragmatist Somaesthetics and its emergent correlations to HCI [29]. Somaesthetics is an interdisciplinary proposal committed to the critical study and practice of somatic cultivation as a centre of sensory appreciation and self-fashioning [28].

In this paper we extend Heidegger’s concepts of present-at-hand and breakdown with a new concept of present-at-body, defined as the reflective use of tools for developing bodily self-awareness. We outline our body-centred approach to wearable technology design by contrasting it with the dominant context-aware approach. Our research also interprets the dynamic interplay between visibility and transparency of body and tool as a fundamental resource for learning and self-development. We illustrate this perspective through some examples, including a case from our research practice. In the process of crafting the body-tool relationship, wearable technology becomes a mediator of experience and reflection, helping to amplify, transform and structure our attention to self. Body-centred wearable technology can assist in this goal of creating aesthetic and meaningful body-based interactive experiences for self-exploration, self-cultivation and improved life quality.

THE BODY-TOOL RELATIONSHIP: DISAPPEARANCE AND SELF-AWARENESS The body-tool relationship is at the crux of human-computer interaction. Philosophy has supplied various theories for understanding the human use of tools and how consciousness and perception are constituted in the act of use. One of the most paradigmatic examples is Heidegger’s theory of tool handling and its emphasis on context awareness through action. In Heidegger’s theory, ready-to-hand represents that state where an individual skilfully manipulates a tool that disappears through their action [36].

In the classic example of the use of a hammer, the person is no longer aware of the hammer as an explicit object in consciousness, but focused on the act of hammering. The

tool (or what Heidegger calls equipment) becomes transparent. Similarly, the user also becomes transparent in the act of hammering. In this mode of being-in-the-world, there is no subject-object distinction, but a unity of structure, a concerned absorption in the world [4, p.67]. “In this familiarity [with the world] Dasein can lose itself in what it encounters within the world” [4, p.70].

After an unintended breakdown or interruption of that action, tools make their re-appearance becoming present-at-hand. The tool re-appears as an explicit object requiring deliberate attention. Temporary or total breakdown of equipment calls forth deliberate action and reflective thinking in order to resolve and restore the transparent behaviour [4].

Importantly for HCI, Heidegger’s emphasis on the context of use as our most basic way of understanding tools – in contrast to an abstract mental perception of objects without context – has highly influenced the field in designing interactive systems to disappear in use, so that the user can focus on the task and not the tool [2, 36]. However the bodily dimension of experience is inadequately explained in Heidegger’s theory of tool handling. Leder [10] provides a phenomenological account of the absent body in skilful action, in which he elaborates the work of Heidegger in a discussion of the ecstatic body and its “from-to” structure of experience. He also refers to the ideas of Merleau-Ponty in the incorporation of technologies into an extended body.

In Leder’s account, our perception and action are carried out within a corporeal field or background. The body-as-a-whole forms an ineradicable presence and corporeal gestalt from which we act [10, p.24]. However in most everyday acts, the corporeal background tends to disappear from explicit awareness [10, p.25] Leder distinguishes between two types of disappearance: focal and background. In focal disappearance, there is a self-effacement of bodily organs when they form the focal origin of a perceptual or actional field [10, p.26] In the act of seeing, the eyes as the organ of vision, disappear. Here the “from-to” structure of the ecstatic body is activated. We see “from” the eyes “to” the world. Background disappearance refers to bodily regions, which are not the focal origin of our sensorimotor engagements. In vision, where the eyes are the focal origin, the rest of the body disappears into the background.

In his discussion of vision and touch manipulation, Leder treats both sense organs as essentially exhibiting the same focal disappearance in perception. In regard to the organ of touch manipulation, he explains the act of climbing a mountain, where the legs and feet disappear as one attends “from” them, not “to” them. However he also admits that there may be an asymmetry between them: “one’s corporeality recedes more thoroughly [in vision] than in touch, whose reciprocity and feeling of impact calls one back to the co-presence of the body with its object” [10, p.15]


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The acquisition of new skills, however, requires conscious attention to the “how” of doing things (a similar process to breakdown). In the learning of how to use new tools, the person incorporates the tool into their body schema [17]. As Leder describes, “to incorporate a tool is to redesign one’s extended body until its extremities expressly mesh with the world” [10, p.34]. When we shift from learning to mastery, we no longer need to think about the how, but can operate with the “from-to”. In the classic example of the blind man’s cane, when one first handles a cane, the focus is on the properties of the cane (its weight, length, texture, etc.) and how it fits the hand. As one begins to acquire skilful manipulation of the cane in exploring and navigating surfaces, the cane effectively becomes an extension of the body and its perceptual powers. One acts on the world through the tool.

In various everyday acts, the body recedes into the background depending on which perceptual and physical powers are required. Yet we always experience a constant stream of bodily sensations and kinesthesias. “My body is always a field of immediately lived sensation (…) Its presence is fleshed out by a ceaseless stream of kinesthesias, cutaneous and visceral sensations, defining my body’s space and extension and yielding information about position, balance, state of tension, desire, and mood” [10, p.23]. This body-state is a constant reference and a potential source of information about ourselves and the world, from which we act. We can consciously become more or less aware of our body-state at any given moment. We now turn to Gendlin’s theory of the body as informational interaction and his concept of the felt sense for assisting in the move from theoretical concepts of embodiment to practical techniques for controlling and cultivating somatic awareness and self-development.

THE FELT SENSE AND THE PRIMACY OF THE BODY

Despite the efficiency of unreflective consciousness and spontaneous action in performing skilled everyday actions, bodily self-awareness is also a useful source of wisdom to encounter the challenges of daily life, as described in Gendlin's concept of felt sense [7, 8]. This concept, rooted in phenomenology and psychotherapy, introduces novel ideas to inspire the new generation of wearables by addressing the bodily dimension of interaction from an inner and reflective perspective.

In order to understand the felt sense as a pre-conceptual feeling coined on the basis of phenomenological concepts, it is important to note that Gendlin [8] recognises Merleau-Ponty’s approach to the lived body, but criticises his vision regarding the relative priority of body and perception. Particularly, Gendlin dissents from Merleau-Ponty’s insistence on prioritising the world of perception as something inherent. Instead, Gendlin defines perception as datum having that shapes our interaction with the environment (ibid). Even when perception is also based on action and interaction with the world, Gendlin states that

the existence of perceptual data presupposes the existence of living bodies in order to obtain and interpret that datum; therefore there is no such thing as a pre-existent perceptual world by itself. For that reason, the body becomes the pre-condition to perception. In addition, the body exceeds language and its historical presence, as language is not efficient to illustrate the complexity of what is sensed or experienced. By exclusively delivering theoretical knowledge about something, it is not possible to transmit the real essence of what is granted by the sensorial dimension of experience. From this point of view, the body becomes a precondition for knowledge acquisition. The body lives its situation by being itself the interaction with the environment [8].

By being interaction, the body stores more information than we are normally consciously aware of. This bodily way of experiencing shaped by its interactive nature has no definition in language. It is sometimes referred to as (...) [6, 7, 8], which goes beyond the mere definition and is bodily implicit by nature [6]. This philosophy of experiencing finds its practical application in psychotherapy, where the term felt sense is used to define that bodily dimension. According to Gendlin, the felt sense:

Is not a mental experience, but a physical one. Physical. A bodily awareness of a situation or person or event. An internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given time – encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once rather than detail by detail [7, p.35].

A felt sense can be defined as a complex bodily feeling hard to put into words. It is the way the body relates phenomena and data, before rational thinking and beyond it (ibid). For instance, on leaving home I immediately know I have forgotten something. This certainty is neither rational nor based on evidence, but strongly physically felt and hard to ignore. It surpasses language, and its description requires conscious self-observance. This self-monitoring process is used by the Focusing technique in psychotherapy to overcome personal issues, from a bodily perspective. Focusing is a holistic practice that promotes a positive attitude towards the felt sense of an issue, situation or experience [19]. Human beings are invited to discover themselves by means of patient self-observance, and through suspension of rational judgement.

In terms of the design of devices and scenarios, we envision the potential amplification of the felt-sense through body-centred wearable technology. Since the felt sense is a physical sensation, it can be anchored and amplified by being complemented with other body-oriented therapeutic techniques, for instance by those that use touch [5]. Touch stimuli can be generated and applied by programming electronic devices with actuated output, worn on the body.

Another inspiring feature is the invitation to create a safe and intimate place for positive self-observance. Gendlin [7]


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emphasises the importance of finding a comfortable, quiet and slightly unfamiliar place for facilitating the emergence of the felt sense. By means of this approach, scenarios of user testing are carefully designed, not exclusively for assessing technical aspects such as a device’s wearability and performance, but also for assisting in the inner process of self-discovery and body-tool crafting. In previous research on crafting aesthetic body-based interactive experiences, Loke et al. created this kind of specialised place and embedded body-focused interactions within guided experiences [12, 14]. Ritual elements concerned with liminal transitioning in and out of bodily states were incorporated into the structure of the interactive experience [12, 13]. Participant attention was directed to aspects of breathing, heartbeat and inner body-state for self-exploration, amplified and externalised through the use of sonified body-data such as pulse and breath sensor readings.

Now, understanding the utility of aware inner-observance, we would like to emphasise the importance of designing tools and technologies able to assist in the development of our bodily awareness and self-cultivation. Through developing our bodily self-awareness, we are then able to better develop our powers of perception and action in the world. This ability to control bodily self-awareness enables the development of a key concept for our approach to technology design that foregrounds the bodily dimension and somatic qualities of our daily life experiences mediated by technology, elaborated in the following section.

SELF-AWARENESS AND PRESENT-AT-BODY

Self-awareness is associated with breakdown in Heidegger’s theories of being-in-the-world and tool handling. It is the counterpart to the disappearance of self and tool in skilful action. Bodily self-awareness, as we have demonstrated in the previous section, can have a positive contribution to our ongoing self-development and ability to act in the world. In the development of a new concept for our approach to wearable technology design that foregrounds the bodily dimension and somatic qualities of our daily life experiences, we begin with the recent work of Tanenbaum et al. [32] on narrative and tangible interaction, where they extended Heidegger’s tool handling concepts. They were interested in the mental activity taking place while we are physically immersed in a task. In this respect, their concept of “present-at-mind” offers an intermediate view between being transparently immersed and hyper aware in experiencing. Present-at-mind is defined as the interplay between different associative awareness and the interaction with a tool, object, interface or a piece of media (ibid). For example, when playing an instrument, a musician can bring some ideas and memories to mind, an aspect that is not taken into consideration in Heidegger's theory of tool handling.

Our approach to wearable technology recognises associative awareness as a resource for inspiring bodily

responses, however it is also important to visualise the potential of directed consciousness for bodily awareness, action and consequently, self-discovery. The emergence of directed consciousness in Heidegger’s approach is generally associated with breakdown as a crash or malfunction. However, according to Dreyfus [4], directed consciousness is actually evoked in every activity in which reflection is required:

Although he concentrates on the special case of breakdown, Heidegger's basic point should be that mental content arises whenever the situation arises deliberate attention (…) Deliberate attention and thus, thematic intentional consciousness can be also be present, for example, in curiosity, reading instruments, repairing equipment and designing and testing new equipment [4, p.70].

In order to highlight the human’s natural impulse for designing, reasoning and learning, at certain points we have to make equipment available for our consciousness and manipulation.

In the context of body-centred wearable technology design, we introduce a new concept of present-at-body, which we define as the reflective use of tools for developing bodily self-awareness. It refers to the heightened awareness of our bodily state, amplified through the use of reliable feedback displayed by wearable technology. Awareness of both body and tool is positively understood in a reflective engagement with learning about the self. The tool facilitates directing our conscious attention to somatic awareness and our ability to influence our bodily state. Fundamental to our definition is the understanding of breakdown as a mode of reflection and learning. We include Dreyfus’ observation in our definition, where the heightened awareness of the equipment becomes an object for reflection, analysis and learning. In this particular proposal, the body is perceived as an equipmental whole as well as “the tool of tools” [29], shaped by self-awareness and technology, where the technology assists by delivering biofeedback for reflection.

It is important to note that the concept of “present-at-body”, inspired by its predecessor “present-at-mind” [32], should not be interpreted as an attempt to reinforce Cartesian dualism and the body-mind split. In both cases, bodily sensations affect the way we think as well as the other way around. Also, by introducing “present-at-body”, we are not necessarily offering a literal translation of Heidegger’s concepts, but setting a standpoint in which the sentient and reflective body is highlighted and put into the discussion at the moment where the tool becomes visible, or present-at-hand.

Compared to the concept of ready-to-hand, where the subject is aware of the activity, but not self aware, present-at-body represents a different scenario by having a subject hyper bodily-aware. However, the similarity is that in both cases – ready-to-hand and present-at-body, the focus on the task is fundamental. In the present-at-body scenario, the


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task of acting in/on the world becomes that of acting on the self and body. Attention is directed to self and the internal state of the body. The body-centred tool becomes a mediator of experience and reflection, helping to amplify, transform and structure our attention to self. In this respect, we believe it is important to encourage the design of tools and experiences that stimulate the emergence of the state of present-at-body and facilitate exploration and development of the self through bodily awareness.

TOWARDS A BODY-CENTRED TECHNOLOGY APPROACH In this section, we propose our view of body-centred technology in contrast to the dominant context-aware approach. Wearable technology is not by definition, necessarily body-centred, and is often put forth as part of the vision of ubiquitous computing and its goal of invisible and transparent technologies. We borrow from Somaesthetics some of the arguments that support our thesis of self-cultivation through the body as fundamental to a body-centred approach to wearable technologies.

A well-designed piece of context-aware technology should anticipate dynamic changes in the context where the situation is taking place [26]. For instance, a screen that changes its levels of brightness depending on the environment's illumination is a straightforward example of a piece of technology that efficiently varies according to context or situation of use. Influenced by Weiser’s vision of ubiquitous computing, context-aware technology adopted the concept in which “the most profound technologies are those that disappear” [35]; in other words, profound technologies would be those that allow us to be immersed in our daily tasks without being aware of their presence. Therefore, in order to design meaningful pieces of context-aware technology, designers have to be able to predict different scenarios of interaction and anticipate users’ needs in daily situations [26].

Similarly, Schick and Malmborg [21] present their vision in regard to the relationship between body-environment and the role of wearable technology in this context. The main argument of their work is that the body is not at risk of disappearing, rather to unfold into the world. Advocating for Weiser’s idea of invisibility, in their interpretation these deep technologies free the body to engage with the world by discarding the need to be aware of the device’s presence. They also propose the term distributed embodiment, in which the body has evolved through the ubiquitousness of technology by dynamically expanding its physical and affective boundaries across the environment (ibid).

Ubiquitous computing allows interaction designers to create wearable technology that amplifies our senses through the environment, magnifying our perceptual phenomena. However, in our interpretation, this expansive embodiment requires an extra element in order to claim the centrality of the body by this approach. Distributed embodiment advocates for the disappearance of devices from our

awareness in order to free the body when performing an action with such object. However, by discarding self-awareness, the context is expanded but not necessarily the body, which still remains in the background. Besides, we cannot ignore that the further the body boundaries expand, they also become blurry and depersonalised. Ubiquitousness of technology and the spread of personal data also raise concerns about privacy, protection and control that must be addressed in order to access the full benefits of technology in an ethical manner [1]. The rise of wearable technology and the corresponding increase in monitoring of personal data (identity and body-state) further exacerbates this issue.

If the goal of ubiquitous context-aware computing is to improve quality of life by making environments more intelligent – tracking, predicting and pre-empting our actions, then our proposal differs from context-aware approaches by introducing self-awareness as a crucial tool for monitoring personal bodily development. Influenced by Somaesthetics, we borrow the interpretation of somatic awareness as a way to engage with the world in order to use tools – including the body – more effectively [29]. This represents a different view from embodied and context-aware technologies that claim for the invisibility of technologies from our bodily awareness in order to generate a deep experience of interaction. Also, every action requires a body – our tool of tools – including our everyday practical actions. In this respect, according to Shusterman [29]:

[A]ttracting shaping of our lives as an art of living could be enriched by greater perceptual awareness of aesthetic meanings, feelings and potentials in our everyday conduct of life.

Basically, what context-aware computing does with the environment in terms of enhancing its responsive qualities, body-centred technology does in the body, by providing meaningful and trustable feedback that allows us to perform more effectively. A focus on reflective somatic awareness heightens and shapes our perceptual field, enhancing our quality of life. For instance, some of our bodily habits may be faulty and even harmful, a situation that may go initially unattended without careful self-observance and prevention [28]. Furthermore, it is important to take into account that bodily self-awareness is fundamental in the process of learning, which is a continual task across our human existence (ibid).

In developing aesthetic and meaningful body-based interactive experiences, with the potential for self-exploration and self-transformation, the somatic traditions provide embodied knowledge, strategies and techniques for cultivating the body-mind connection and enhancing our perceptual and physical powers. Somatic practices concerned with somatic training and body awareness, such as the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method, yoga, tai chi, meditation and so forth, work with attention, awareness, imagination and movement as variables for


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tuning into body-state through internal listening, sensing and feeling and effecting transformations on body-state able to be differentiated and experienced [13, 14, 23, 24]. Body-based therapeutic techniques such as Focusing, also introduce strategies based on training unprejudiced self-observance in order to improve daily situations through the practice [7].

BODY-TOOL VISIBILITY THROUGH BODY-CENTRED TECHNOLOGY

Having outlined our proposal for a body-centred approach to wearable technology design, in this section we discuss the interplay between the visibility and transparency of the body-tool coupling. Also, we will analyse how through the interaction with well-crafted body-centred devices, participants reach a sense of appropriateness to the display data that allows them to iteratively assess their context and bodies. The dialogue between the focal attention from device to body and vice versa becomes one of the desired features in order to gain access to our self-exploration and discovery. Moreover, we exemplify the importance of data ownership as a fundamental aspect for inner exploration and learning with body-centred technology.

Awareness towards the device and the body is shown as cyclical in body-centred technology. Even though in body-centred technology we stimulate the awareness of the self, the body and device presence moves constantly between the foreground and the background. In that sense, we detected different stages of body-tool visibility through the interaction with body-centred technology, as illustrated in Figure 1.

1 - The interaction starts with the placement of wearable technology on the body: Awareness towards the body as well as the device is evoked and both become visible.

2 - Feedback recognition and understanding: The device starts functioning, drawing attention towards itself. Through careful observation we interiorize the task as well as the tool’s features.

3 - Feedback ownership and interaction: After the device is examined, we recognize and accept the displayed data as belonging to the body. We experience a sense of ownership towards its feedback. The body interacts with the device through directed consciousness in order to generate some changes in the display. At this stage, awareness is located mostly on the body. One example of this type of interaction is a subject trying to control his or her breath in order to change a determined output. The body itself provides feedback on our endeavours to changes its state.

4- Observation on device for changes in display: The cycle re-starts from the point that the device responds and draws attention to itself in order to re-confirm that the displayed information belongs to the body.

5- Feedback ownership and interaction: Reconfirmation. The relationship between ownership towards the data, interaction, bodily feedback and then, observation in the display becomes cyclical.

Figure 1 - Cycle of body-tool visibility in body-centred technology


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6- Interaction ends: The device stops functioning. Awareness is now directed to the surrounding context. Body and device may become transparent.

The sense of ownership or self-identification towards the device feedback is one of the main features and goals of body-centred technologies. Through this data appropriation and interaction, the body is iteratively transforming and developing. Without appropriation of the feedback, there is no willingness to explore. In that sense, it is important to note that in order to facilitate the feeling of ownership to the displayed data, it is fundamental to perform a convincing representation of the data visualisation (or other modalities) through reliable feedback. Trust of the data is a crucial element in order to establish a strong correlation between the feedback and the participant’s sense of ownership. Moreover, designers have to deliver a carefully crafted device and interaction in order to obtain participant’s attention and reinforce the sense of self-identification.

As an example to illustrate this cycle of attentional focus and self-observation, we introduce the case of Eloquent Robes1, a wearable art installation that projects visualisations of heartbeat data on the body to communicate and make evident intimate physiological data. During individual user testing sessions, nine participants were dressed with an undergarment containing a large pocket situated between the shoulder blades. This pocket held electronic components such as an Arduino UNO, wireless communication devices (XBee), a pulse sensor and batteries. Additionally, a personal white paper garment covered the undergarment and the participant’s actual clothing. Biofeedback in the shape of coloured circles generated from a pulse sensor attached to the earlobe was projected on the garment. The mapping between the colour and heartbeat was divided into six ranges, where the warmer the colour, the faster the heartbeat. Participants were asked to pay attention to their displayed feedback. At the end of the experience, paper garments were displayed on a mannequin, over which an image captured from the last second of the interaction was projected. Then they were asked to stick coloured circles onto them, highlighting and matching the most memorable spots projected over their bodies. After the generation of what was called a “reflective garment”, they compared their results with another finished garment randomly selected from previous participations.

The analysis resulted in three key observations that evidence the cyclical nature of data appropriation and how this data moves constantly in both directions from the foreground to the background:

1 Nunez-Pacheco, C. and Loke, L. Eloquent Robes. OZCHI 2012 Melbourne, conference poster. Installation exhibited in “Organised Cacophony”, The Rocks Pop-up, Sydney 2012

1- Increased ownership of displayed data through bodily agency: There is a strong correlation between self-identification with the displayed information and the will to influence it. Five out of nine participants, who put their attention in their bodies (active) – rather than only on the projection of colours (passive) – experienced a greater sense of ownership and self-identification towards the displayed data. All of the active participants assessed “self-identification” with the higher qualification. As a result of this sense of owning the data, they spontaneously attempted to control their heartbeat in order to generate changes in their visual feedback. In that sense, they described experiencing different stages in their interaction, starting from the rational assimilation towards the data, sense of ownership over the output and then, self-agency expressed by the willingness to influence the data and generate changes in the projected images. Considering that heartbeat is a physiological data difficult to influence, some participants were more successful than others in their attempts. 2- Self-attributions when interpreting other participant’s data: Self-attribution towards the displayed data is directly related to the sense of ownership. Only participants who tried to influence the projected output showed strong inclinations to self-attribution. In this case, we define this self-attribution as the use of embodied experiencing as a reference point to generalise our understanding about the world. For instance, one participant insistently attempted to obtain blue circles (mostly associated with calmness) with no success. When she compared her garment with another, she said: “This person was obviously very calm because he or she got blue dots and I didn't”. However, what she overlooked was that the previous subject actually highlighted several red circles, which may be correlated or associated with the state of being excited. Moreover, it is possible to assume that our subject was not calm since she did not get blue dots, an aspect that to her is correlated to the state of feeling calm. What she did was try to reflect her own experience in reference to another example, in this case a second reflective garment to compare with. Similar patterns of response were observed in all the subjects that tried to control their feedback and interpreted the displayed data as belonging to them. 3- Immersion in displayed data diminishes discomfort of device: During the interview sessions, four out of nine participants expressed that the weight of the equipment was somehow uncomfortable for them. However, three of them added that they forgot this discomfort after they started interacting with the installation. The fourth subject expressed that her device intermittently appeared and disappeared from her consciousness during the experience. Interestingly, despite the complaints against the equipment’s weight, three out of four of these participants assessed self-identification towards the data with the


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highest qualification, which suggest that in the case of technologies that use self-awareness as a tool, the device’s comfort may be secondary compared with other aspects such as trust in data reliability and also the provision of engaging imagery that stimulates the generation of theories for self-attributions.

Figure 2 - Eloquent Robes

In a similar direction, the artist George Khut has examined the use of biofeedback and audience experience in public and non-orthodox settings. In his interactive piece Cardiomorphologies, he explored ways of delivering to audiences an alternative understanding into how body and mind are connected through visualisations of breath and heartbeat [18]. One of the artist’s aims pursued through the interaction with this installation was to be “instructive”, to transmit to participants the feeling that they were able to reflect and learn something about their own physiological process. In his study, it was demonstrated that the balance between ambiguity and clarity of the displayed data is fundamental in order to obtain rich responses from participants’ engagement. The body-device cycle of visibility is also evident in this work. For instance, one participant described how his awareness was moving from external thoughts to finally focus on the visualisation as an agent for his own relaxation.

The use of bodily awareness as a tool for reflection is also explored through the design of the public wearable computing art installation called Whisper. Schiphorst and Andersen [25] describe the creation of gestural protocols for physiological data transfer, which were applied in the design of Whisper. The artistic aim behind the creation of Whisper was designing expressive interactions able to deliver intimacy, privacy, affect and communication. This installation monitors physiological data patterns, collecting heartbeat and breath with interconnected devices. One of the most important concepts behind the design of this installation was the sense of “paying attention” to one’s own self, then transferring this experience to others. Even though the authors do not explicitly describe the cycle of awareness, this is an example of an electronic art installation that applies body-centred principles such as using awareness towards the body and displayed feedback as tools for learning and inner exploration.

The above examples illustrate this understanding of the cyclical nature of body-tool visibility and its importance in enabling somatic self-exploration. The ongoing shift of focal attention between body, tool and context is viewed as a positive aspect of learning about ourselves and exploited in our approach to body-centred technologies. CONCLUSION In this paper, we presented our argument regarding the importance of designing for somatic awareness and self-cultivation by means of body-centred wearable technology in order to improve our quality of life. Our approach is influenced by Shusterman’s somaesthetical emphasis on the malleable relationship between our sensory powers of appreciation and the condition of the living body and its functions. Our ability to observe and control our internal body-state and through directed practice, enhance our perceptual and actional powers, is fundamental to our approach. By paying attention to our internal body-state, we are also unravelling a source of implicit wisdom, as we explored in Gendlin's concept of felt sense. The body-tool relationship was understood through the phenomenological accounts of Heidegger’s theory of tool handling, specifically the disappearance of tools in use and Leder’s elaborations of how the body also disappears in everyday acts.

As an alternative to this concept of disappearance, which has highly influenced the field of context-aware and ubiquitous computing, we introduced a new concept present-at-body, inspired by Heidegger's ideas of present-at-hand and the reflective mode beyond breakdown. Present-at-body refers to the heightened awareness of our bodily state, amplified through the use of reliable feedback displayed by wearable technology. Fundamental to our definition is the understanding of directed consciousness as a mode of reflection and learning. Awareness of both body and tool is positively understood in a reflective engagement with learning about the self. The tool facilitates directing our conscious attention to somatic awareness and our ability to influence our bodily state. The body-centred approach to technology proposes the use of thematic or directed consciousness as a tool for iteratively improving bodily self-agency. Since the body is not like other tools or equipment, it requires permanent monitoring in order to attend to the endless task of self-improvement. Therefore, rather than discarding self-awareness as an undesirable consequence of poorly designed interactive scenarios and devices, we aim to utilise it as an aesthetic resource for self-discovery and consequently, self-development.

We presented the case of Eloquent Robes to exemplify how awareness towards the body and the device is not static, but cyclical and dynamic. We discussed how ownership towards the displayed data is one of the most important features of body-centred technologies in order to facilitate interaction and self-discovery. By pursuing a body-centred approach to wearable technology design, new directions


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open up for engaging in an emergent area of design research with emphasis in iterative body-tool observance and personal growth, leading to wearable technologies that establish and promote connection to self and opportunities for self-awareness and transformation.

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Crafting the Body-Tool: A Body-Centred Perspective on Wearable Technology

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