Interfacing: An Exploration of Sensory Experiences

Abstract

Interfacing is the way our senses respond to beings, material and devices. From here, interfaces become more than smartphones or pixels on a screen. This research work identifies interdependencies between bodies and material. Through sculpting or shaping, clay for instance, digital devices or virtual environments can be modelled, while also offering bodily ways to make what could be. Interfaces then become interactive, body responsive, story sharing and co-making materials. To make body responsive devices, more people with varied experiences need to be involved in making our technologies. Body-material affordances can be established by acknowledging and responding to experiences of the body, e.g. sensory experiences and expressions of body knowledge. These interfaces would then afford responsive movements to suit diverse groups of people coming from varied lived experiences.

Body-centred interaction is made possible by means of non-digital interaction. Through the primacy of sensory experiences, interfaces can then avoid high-precision repetitive interactions, while affording more general movements when using software and devices. The first of the three microstudies in this work, establishes an awareness of environment, followed by participation in an environment with non-digital devices, and finalised by a response to these experiences. One form of participation was to sculpt or shape an interface out of clay; here participants, with their body, responded to material and contributed to the immediate environment. Shaping is a body-material responsive process where the participant decides when their interface, or device, is ready, i.e. complete. Following this, a microstudy was conducted that involved an activity known as stone balancing. Here, gaze tracking revealed the end of an interaction as a duration, not an instance: as hands released the stones, and gaze lingered. The third and final microstudy was another stone balancing experience, this time in the dark with glow-in-the-dark stones and without the gaze tracker. The dark environment afforded a low-sensory environment and general movement. Overall, this work on sensory experiences and general movement establishes meaning and importance to the interdependent bodily process of interfacing.