Just a quick entry this time to announce that the paper investigating which bodies are included or excluded in Embodied Interaction research at TEI (Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction). The article is open access and available for your perusal at the ACM Digital Library.
Here is an excerpt:
Living bodies are inherently messy. They sweat, they stumble, they swear. The bodily messes can serve as a reminder how we might choose restlessness over comfort, how our findings are con- stantly in flux and require regular (re)interpretation13. Embodied computing is full of politics, which are currently shaped more normatively and abstracting away from the inherent messiness of living. As a counter measure, we might consider taking up cyborg politics in embodied interactions. “Cyborg politics are the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly” [Haraway 2016, p.57]. Acknowledging the assumptions inherent in work on embodied computing at TEI can only be a first step; a step we need to stay uncomfortable with productively opening up our field to make space for previously neglected knowledges, insights and designs.