Designing in Conversation With Dance and Movement Practice Using First-Person Methods

Jury

Kristina Andersen, Associate Professor, Eindhoven University of Technology, Reviewer and examiner

 Andrew McPherson, Professor, Imperial College London, Reviewer and examiner 

 Kate Elswit, Professor, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, Examiner 

 Sarah Homewood, Assistant Professor, University of Copenhagen, Examiner 

 Jean-Daniel Fekete, Research Director, Inria Saclay, Université Paris-Saclay, LISN, Examiner 

Abstract

Digital technologies today play a role in dance practice by facilitating and supporting artistic creation, expression, and learning. The way these technologies are designed has a profound impact on their users. Their rapid development and adoption have raised concerns among scholars about the potential overshadowing or loss of tacit, embodied dance knowledge. As a result, this has prompted interest in exploring the challenges of designing technologies that effectively articulate, foreground, and transmit dance knowledge. 

My research centres on designing ‘in conversation’ with dance and movement practice using first-person methods in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI). These are qualitative research methods that help articulate subjective experience and embodied knowledge. In my work, my own bodily engagement in dance and music practice constructs the foundation of my interaction design practice. My approach includes autoethnography as a tool for subjective narration of embodied phenomena, autoethnographic design, where my subjective experience informs my design practice, and creative arts and crafts practice, which in itself is a personal, experiential mode of inquiry, in large part relying on the artist’s intuition and own bodily engagement. These approaches deepen my understanding of proprioceptive, kinaesthetic, and socio-cultural dimensions of dance and movement knowledge that emerge, evolve, and persist over time – dimensions that tend to be taken for granted when not taking lived experience into account. Beyond my individual understanding of dance, I strive to design technology in ways that emphasise the importance of oral transmission, embodied knowledge, and community practice. Through committed engagement with movement practice, I access the bodily knowledge that informs my design process. Through designing in proximity with communities of knowledge, I learn the ways in which I can mobilise my interaction design practice to benefit those around me. By joining traditions of first-person methods and practice-based artistic research within HCI, I propose designing ‘in conversation’ as a research approach that is particularly well-suited to the study of movement practices. 

I demonstrate my use of first-person methods when designing ‘in conversation’ with movement practice through three design studies: The Suspended Circles, a digital musical instrument and kinetic sculpture tracing my evolving understanding of music as movement. The Sounding Scarfs, silk scarfs sonifying dancers’ movements and accompanying the oral transmission of the modern dance repertoire by Isadora Duncan, fostering continued practice and engagement with a century-old dance repertoire. And finally, the Plaster Sculptures, a series of plaster pots physicalising my bodily transformation from learning the Duncan repertoire. These different studies and artefacts serve as research objects and experimentation from particular contexts of designing in proximity with dance and music practice. They communicate the potential of design in reshaping our understanding of the body and the tacit knowledge it carries.