Hello, my name is Thorhildur Asgeirsdottir and on behalf of
myself and Rob Comber I will present our paper Making Energy
Matter: Somaesthetic Design for Ethical Relations and Energy
Systems.
Our paper outlines a case study of first person engagement with
energy systems, and it shows how some asthetic design methods can
cultivate and design for new ways of being with energy
systems. We argue that the transformative potential of soma
design can help to realize a more ecologically engaged
perspective for sustainable HCI.
The central question of our research is how we are relating
to energy and how that informs our design practice around
interactions with energy systems. We started this work
from the perspective of how to act responsibly within a context
of energy abundance, where logics of responsibility lie
within the individual. It is precisely in these energy
abundant contexts that new approaches to energy consumption
and technology design have the greatest capacity for reducing
energy consumption both locally and within the broader global
climate crisis.
This work was started in late 2021 and since then the energy
situation globally and in Sweden where this work took place, has
drastically changed as a result of the Russian invasion into
Ukraine. Things have changed as far as how people are thinking
about energy systems, but the underlying cultural practices
around how we relate to energy are very slow to change. What
this new energy context highlights even further is that
it is a necessity for us as designers and consumers to
better align our energy consumption within limits and to
recognize that privilege requires responsibility.
Before we get into the specific methodology we used, it's
important to note that both authors are able bodied and as
someone designed privileges first person experience. The
design work may not reflect or may exclude the experiences of
people with additional needs.
For example, those who require additional needs for mobility or
movement.
Our methods we used were somaesthetic design methods to
guide a research through design process.
I did design work on my own and in collaboration with others in
the space of the kitchen. There we closely studied and created
interactions and put them into the world to probe what is
happening in the relation between people and energy
systems. Our choice of methods drew on defamiliarization and
estrangement practices. We did autobiographical design, slow
walks, and aesthetic labs around the particular energy relations
present in the kitchen. The early autobiographical design
work focused on designing for sustainability. This revealed
the trajectory of fatalism
and restriction –\hand it wasn't until I turned towards
enacting material relations in Co performance with others that
I was able to open into a more holistic relationship with
energy.
Over the course of my design work engaged, I engaged with two
participants in a slow walk in their own kitchen, and from
there, together with one of the participants we conducted in an
aesthetic lab to deepen in on a specific material engagement
that arose from our shared Slovak.
Most interesting was the difference revealed between the
autobiographical design phase, which spiraled towards rational
choice and emotional exhaustion, and then the Co performative
somatic engagements with slow walks and later esthetic labs.
These latter design processes ask similar questions to the
autobiographical work, namely, what are the energy systems and
how do we engage with them. But it did so in a way that
explicitly questioned the relations rather than assuming
their existence or binary states of on or off.
This paper started from a desire to design for more sustainable
engagement with energy systems using someone design as a
response to the perceived immateriality of energy systems,
foreground attentions and how and in what ways we can and
currently do not relate to those energy systems.
Through first person engagement alone and with another
participant, we saw how positioning ourselves among each
other, the materiality of energy and the energy system itself
resulted in increased complexity of ethical relations between
these various moving parts.
While it is tricky to relate to the formlessness of energy and
energy systems as a whole, positioning it within the
relations and relational ethics makes it matter in a more
tangible way.
Mainstream directions within sustainable HCI have been around
interventions grounded in deepening users connection to
sustainability. In our work, we founded tension with the attempt
to design for sustainability, as exhibited in the
autobiographical design phase that happened over the first
couple of months.
We're through the inventory of and energy practices. The
question of sustainability became a binary one. Is this
practice sustainable or not? And the concept of sustainability
was thus rendered along a linear scale with an assumed origin of
totally sustainable.
Our conclusion is that sustainability, as it is
currently understood in Western contexts, is difficult to feel.
It must always be accounted for. But rational choice doesn't lead
to anything more sustainable per se, rather it leads the eco
anxiety and distress. And on top of the emotional labour of
contending with this. It only pushes energy systems further
into the background.
We're not arguing that we should give up on designing for
sustainability. Instead, we find characteristics within the
enacting of material relations in soma design, namely moments
of care, collaboration, and preciousness – these open up
future opportunities for transformative relations,
turning towards relations. The design process produced a much
more nuanced ethical relation to the specific materiality of the
energy system. This relation was not singular, but extended
through the materiality to the systems producing it.
This work took place over the period of eight months and
produced design sensitivities and design knowledge that
challenge current paradigms around designing for
sustainability and propose new, exciting paths forward. Our
intention with this work is not to explicitly design energy
solutions, but to account for the process of soma design in
sensitizing towards energy relations. And while this
extended engagement may not be feasible for everyone,
everywhere, the design process indicates the generative
potential of this process and particularly in interaction with
others.
And with this, our concluding argument is the transformative
potential of some design, and how can help to realize a more
ecologically engage perspective for sustainable HDI.
Thank you so much.