A Phenomenological Approach to Wearable Technologies and Viscerality: From embodied interaction to biophysical music performance

Abstract

During the past decade, embodied knowledge has provided novel important insights to rethink mediation technology, thereby paving the way for a transdisciplinary approach to wearable technologies. Stemming from a phenomenological-based approach and considering current trends in sonic interaction design, this article proposes an extensive account on embodied approaches to mediation technology and underlines the increasing importance of somatic knowledge within the field. It also presents an autoethnographic analysis of my own performance, which provides an original contribution to the artistic application of wearable technologies. Stemming from an ongoing research-creation on musical improvisation with biophysical technologies, the case study emphasises how an embodied and visceral approach to interaction can transform wearable devices into an active sensory-perceptual mode of experiencing, which is capable of stimulating the performer’s sensorimotor metaplasticity. The reconfiguration of a body’s automations through the use of sound feedback is a process that unfolds with a high degree of sensitivity in which the body can be poetically understood as an emergent territoriality, inhabited and transfigured by the sound.