Bodies Inform (Upgrade Report)

Abstract

This thesis asks, what does it mean to be an embodied designer? Design is increasingly concerned with finding, understanding and shaping meaning in human experience. This emphasis on experience calls for embodied design approaches, such as bodystorming, which employ the body of the designer and other participants. I argue that specific vocabularies, practices and theories within design (including experience design which draws heavily on phenomenology) neutralise the body to the extent that it is made absent. I propose a different approach where the body could instead become a vital, messy, subjective and potentially subversive site of design knowledge.

Alternatively, my research builds on embodied theories of human cognition such as Francisco Varela et al.’s enactivism, Jerome Bruner’s enactive representation and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s embodied metaphors, as well as post-colonial feminist theories such as Sara Ahmed’s new materialist metaphor of ‘orientation’, Rosi Braidotti’s ‘politics of location’ and Cheryl Buckley’s critique of post-modernist and phenomenological theory in design. In order to challenge current vocabularies of the body in design my research employs autobiographical memories and bodily metaphors such as mongrels, monsters and giant ears.

Through practice research I investigate ways in which a designer’s own subjective bodily experiences can be used to inform their design activities. Presented here as two case studies, I critically reflect on four experiments (In Search of the Blue Danube, Walking, Locating and Layering Stories, Audio Graffiti and Storyball) that investigate embodied ways of locating (placing and finding) stories within the body, its movements and environment, and a major project (Enactive Encounters) that reflects on how a collaboration with theatre practitioners and researchers led to a new embodied ideation approach.

Experiences are complex. Turning the multi-layered flow of experience into comprehensible and replicable experiences requires a level of simplification and reduction. The challenge is to do so without destroying what is wondrous, unique or compelling in the first place. In fact, the process of simplification should not be about replicating what is known but rather about inviting what is unknown by embracing the unknowability of experience rather than controlling it. This process must be understood through, and led by, the body. I found performer training could effectively orientate designers towards their own bodies and the bodies of others. I discovered that the site of design practice is not the designer’s body, but an ongoing dialogical encounter with other bodies within socio-enactive spaces. Resisting the discrepancy between neutral theoretical articulations of embodiment and the complex, hybridised, amplified, socially, spatially, technologically and enactively constructed bodies encountered in my participatory practice led to development of a new embodied design approach - body(in)forming. This approach provides a tangible practical method for the embodied designer and also a theoretical vocabulary with which to understand experience in general.

Upgrade Report and Thesis Outline

This upgrade report is a document of my research practice which investigates how, when and to what end and extent designers can explicitly use their bodies to inform their design practice and what it means to be an embodied designer and researcher. It is composed of first-hand practice-based experiments, cases studies and theoretical investigations into practices of the body in a way that each mode of research mutually informs the other. As such this document is neither a design portfolio nor a traditional textual thesis, but, a mongrel designed in mind of its audience, and an authenticity to the orientation, progression and development of my research. The structure of this document does not entirely follow the chronology of research activities. A timeline showing how theory and practice interrelate is shown in Figure 0.1.0. The layout strikes a balance between text readability and image prioritisation. Visual and written material exist side by side to minimise cross-referencing to secondary material. Where possible figures are displayed at the point of reference. Audio and video documentation is available from a single chronologically structured YouTube playlist which is individually referenced where appropriate. The document has been designed around a perfect grid layout in which all content aligns to a common grid comprised of 12 rows and 12 columns. This grid is calculated as multiples of the line height, which conforms to the standard thesis requirement, being around 150% of the 10pt body font size. Each chapter starts with a prologue consisting of a subjectively voiced autobiographical memory relevant to the contents of the chapter. The document follows similar examples of published research practice making it familiar and accessible to an audience of cross-disciplinary practitioners and researchers whether they are from a design, theatre, educational or undisclosed background. This upgrade report includes the first four chapters of the final thesis, the outline of which is detailed below.

Chapter One — Introduction*

In this chapter I introduce my research and my research questions. Through media studies and Prague-born philosopher Vilem Flusser I offer a general definition of design for this research as an activity of informing and that which in-forms, gives form to, the material world. I make explicit the relationship between this concept and the form of our own bodies by stating that it is through our form, we inform the world, and yet, it is through our forms, that we are informed. I go on to introduce myself as a design practitioner and documenter of music and theatre performance. I highlight how my interest in embodiment—the use of the body in practice and its influence on experience—remained a constant, throughout my professional career. I problematise cross-disciplinary as a definition of my skill-set. I introduce the term mongrel as an evocative and visceral modifier to the field in which I practice and investigate the etymological and historical use of the term through the works of Anne Galloway, Donna Haraway and Istvan Csicsery-Ronay.

Chapter Two — Early Practice*

This chapter gives an account of my early practice I initiated to address my research questions. These practices are presented as experiments rather than traditional design case-studies and I use the analogy of the walking drift to describe how my research is orientated by the activities of practice to explain their exploratory nature; I go where the practice, and my body, leads me. I introduce a key theme I uncovered in this early practice as ‘location as embodiment.’ I describe four experiments from this early phase of my research. In Search of the Blue Danube and Walking, Locating and Layering Stories exemplify the method of walking as a critical spatial practice (Rendell 2003, 2006) and reflects the themes of stepping and subjectivity, consistent throughout my research. Audio Grafitti and Storyball turn my attention inward toward the location of stories within bodily gestures. I explain how these experiments expanded my understanding of how experience and experiences-as-research can be documented as they happen and how they are re-remembered, re-examined and reflected upon as events, or multiple events, after the original experience. I highlight the importance of acknowledging my subjectivity and the context in which these events occurred. I draw on the work of Michel Serres to begin to define a conceptualisation of my own reflective methods, coined Textural Reflexivity.

Chapter Three - Embodied Designer*

This chapter begins with a detailed theoretical investigation into how human experience is understood and characterised within the field of experience design. I problematise the absence of the body in these detailed descriptions and point to the phenomenological theoretical frame on which experience design draws its own definitions of experience. I then draw on theories of human cognition that are embodied to resolve this issue of the body or, in other words, the absence of the body in these definitions of experience by drawing on the work of Francisco Varela et al., Jerome Bruner, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

I continue this theoretical investigation by looking at specific practices of the body in design, looking at how and at what stage the body is used during a design process; whether the body is used in prescribed ways, or, freely; how much importance is given to the felt experience; how the body is orientated and how that influences what matters to the designer; and finally, which body is discussed and how it is articulated. I look at the evolution of bodystorming (Burns et al. 1994, 1995) from early approaches in HCI as ways of acting out use-cases and design scenarios to their evolution into body-first, pre-ideation approach beneficial to experience design. I also investigate the incorporation of Somaesthetic theory from Richard Shusterman into design practice exemplified by the work of Kristina Höök and Soma Design theory.

Chapter Four — Enactive Encounters: Stepping with Theatre Practitioners*

This chapter provides a case study of my practice for this research. It focuses on a collaboration with Dr Göze Saner, a Theatre Practitioner and researcher from Goldsmiths University, in which we investigated ways to develop a low-cost and accessible way of enactivating space to deliver a performer training exercise called ‘stepping’ without the presence of a skilled trainer/teacher.

Chapter Five — Re-Embodying**

This chapter defines the essential characteristics of an enactive space and a unique methodology of bodystorming for enactive and body-first ideation called body(in)forming. I compare body(in)forming to the embodied design approaches investigated in chapter 3 and I also consider how the use of my body support or challenge the characteristics of experience described in the same chapter.

Highlightinh a dichotomy between neutral representations of the body in design and the complex, hybridised and amplified bodies of my own practice, this chapter also draws on post-colonial feminist theory such as Sara Ahmed’s new materialist metaphor of ‘orientation’ (Ahmed 2010), Rosi Braidotti’s ‘politics of location’ (Braidotti 1994) and Cheryl Buckley’s critique of post-modernist and phenomenological theory in design (Buckley 1999) to highlight how subjectivity can be used to re-embody bodies, neutralised through design discourses. The chapter also adds to the bodily metaphor of mongrel (Hathaway 2003 2004, Galloway 2015, Csicsery- Ronay 1991), with monster (Shildrick 2004) and giant ears (Derrida 1985) as a way to challenge current vocabularies of the body in design.

Section titles are as follows:

• 5.1. Encounters within Enactive spaces
• 5.2. Defining Body(in)forming
• 5.3. Returning to Experience
• 5.4. The Orientated Body
• 5.5. The Monstrous and Amplified Body
• 5.6. The Feminist Body

Chapter Six — final practice ***

This chapter will provide a case study of my final practice which, at the time of writing this upgrade report, has yet to be confirmed. Possible options include; a collaborative project in which I will introduce a new use-case to further explore body(in)forming as a design approach; a series of workshops in which theatre practitioners and designers will work together to discover embodied design approaches appropriate for participants own practices; a continuation of the experiment, audio graffiti, but using the body(in)forming ideation approach. It will be composed of a detail first person account of practice, a critical reflection and a relevant literature review, and/or theoretical investigation.

Chapter Seven - Conclusion ***

This chapter concludes my thesis by summarising my research journey to becoming an embodied designer.

* Complete. Included in this report.
** Partially Complete. Not included.
*** Not Completed. Not included.