Cultivating kinaesthetic awareness through interaction: Perspectives from somatic practices and embodied cognition

Abstract

Designing for kinaesthetic awareness, the perception of our body's position and movement, presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities. While these implications are relatively new in the HCI community, they resonate with experiential knowledge from somatic practices and theories in embodied cognition. Still, moving is an interactive sound installation designed to support the perception of a person's micro-movements. We elaborate here on findings from a previous study, first emerged inductively from a grounded theory analysis of phenomenological interviews. Tracing the connections between these findings, and existing research in somatic practices and embodied cognition, reveals a range of distinctions and alternatives to flesh out the question: How can we understand and cultivate kinaesthetic awareness through interaction?