Project > Creative Industries :

MINDtouch BBC Project: Embodiment Theory
& User Interface Devices

 

Embodiment Theory & User Interface Devices: BBC Project

Project Team:
Co-PIS: Dr Marc Price BBC & Professor Lizbeth Goodman, Project Director
Lead Researchers:  Camille Baker & Dr Susan Kozel
The BBC is sponsoring a PhD project leading to a PhD dissertation by Camille Baker regarding the use of Embodiment Theory & User Interface.

Project Aims:
(BBC) To work with biofeedback sensor technologies on the bodies of Tai Chi practitioners and meditators in tandem with mobile phone technology to find unique and meaningful ways to work with and visualize the mind/body activity in various states of movement, stillness and meditation.

(PhD) To work with the above and create interesting mobile and wearable exchanges of body signals with mobile performers to create, mix and “VJ” mobile video expressions, as one of two ways of exploring mobile networked performance, affect and “telepathy” or collaborative creativity and performativity.

Method: 
(BBC) Research involving the exploration of the use of biosensor devices, interacting with mobile phones as the main computing technology, while studying Tai Chi practitioners/meditators and other performer/participants wearing the devices in practice, to understand which interactions and developments are meaningful and when they occur and how to work with that in the performance context of my PhD research on performance and liveness.

Observation, testing and modification:

(PhD) Practice-based research creating one major project and one curated event to investigate 'liveness' and 'presence' in mobile performance (incorporating embodiment, affect and sensation), so that I can understand how or whether it is felt and/or exists in this domain of expression, in order to be able to identify liveness on mobile, networked performance and talk about its qualities. Live events, observations, interviews and modification and more events, with processes and realizations from phenomological and ethnographic methods.

Mobile media workshops: Participant performers will experiment with mobile multimedia phones with video cameras and then phone their videos to a database. They will create mobile video blogs which explore their own consciousness, non-verbal emotional/affective senses and dream states, embodiment, and communication, using these mobile media tools to express themselves non-verbally.

 

Li Zhang (aka Jane) and Camille baker