Hello.
My name is on Anna Ståhl
and I'm going to present the Paper Making New Worlds - Transformative.
Becomings with Soma design.
This work is done in collaboration with Madeline Balaam, Rob Comber,
Pedro Sanches, and Kristina Höök.
In here we present a longer term
study of the prototypes, the Soma Mat and Breathing Light.
The prototypes aim at increased body awareness
by guiding your attention to the body using modalities of heat and light.
In this paper, we also show how engagement with these prototypes
lead to transformations in how participants live their lives in a way
that is world-making to them.
We will now watch a short video to show you
to understand what the Soma Mat and Breathing Light is about.
These prototypes were made with a Soma design approach,
which is a way of designing with new digital materials
that can then shape interactions, that engage with users'
aesthetic experiences and ways of being in the world.
In soma design it is not only the material
that is being shaped to build an interactive artifact,
but also designers' and the users' soma - it sees our somas as moldable.
We can then extend on experiences and create for better ways
of being in the world.
And it is exactly here that the transformational potential of soma design lies.
So to the
study, the prototypes were lent for three months
to four households within total seven participants.
They were instructed to use the prototypes three to five times a week,
and we conducted three semi-structured interviews
with them.
Our desire in this study to understand the transformational of potential
of soma design brought with it its challenges in
knowledge construction on people, objects and their relations.
It was very hard to understand how the transformational effects
of engaging with our prototypes that aim at molding something
as somas being in the world, which are both complex
and dynamic, could be described without running the risk of becoming
a representation of a detached, simplified and discrete event.
This is why we turn to entanglement theories
and especially the performative view by Barad
and Ingold's metaphors of lines, knots and mesh work, which both describe
a dynamic entangled ontology that is always becoming
So with this worldview, we struggled quite a bit
to find a method that would make justice in describing our data in a way
that kept its inherent entangled holistic and dynamic character.
We turned to storytelling to create a compelling
presentation of each single individual's experience and together
we crafted short stories with accompanying images for each individual
to exemplify.
Here we turn to one of our participants, Sarah, who is a 30 year
old woman living alone in a small flat in the city center of Stockholm.
Just to give you some background, Sarah suffers from tension headaches
and has sought treatment and received a lot of advices
to do that haven't really made sense to her.
She has been advised to engage in Qigong practices,
slow down in general and meditate and so on.
I will now read parts of our participant's Sarah's story: Now, it was part of her.
In a short time.
It had become entangled in her whole life.
Sometimes it just happened by itself
without her even actively thinking about being slow.
Several times now, her friends had complained about her walking too slowly.
She had even started questioning her choices of living
in the city center, where she had lived her entire life.
The tempo was so high in the city and people were stressed.
They were running to the underground, the bus everywhere.
When she met someone
moving at the same slow pace so she thought: You and me, stranger!
Lately she has
noticed that she was less tired, not pressing her teeth as much.
The headache was also better.
Sarah poured up the pasta on a plate and sat down by the tiny
kitchen table ,with room for two persons, while eating
she reflected back on the first time she had tried the mat and the lamp
and how she instantly had found she wanted more of this.
It was something new to her that she hadn't experienced before.
A deeper kind of relaxation experience.
Previously, she had thought she was relaxed when lying on the sofa,
but this was a completely different level of relaxation, and it was so quick
for her to get there 30 seconds on the mat and she was already relaxed.
She especially especially remembers some sessions on the mat early on,
where she for the first time could let go of all thoughts.
And if a thought appeared it was so easy
to let go of it.
We then made a reflective analysis
making use of Ingold's, metaphors of lines, knots and meshwork.
And through this, we describe how our participants become with these prototypes.
The intention here is not to untangle, but to reflect on their relations.
If we take Sarah's story and look at it using the words of Ingold,
we can describe Sarah's early experience of body awareness
and being advised turn to slow practices, as something
that becomes "and"..."and"..."and",
that is not entangling and becoming "with"..."with"...
"with".
When she describes how she through engaging with the
Soma prototypes gets hold of an experience that is new to her
and the line that is made up by this experience becomes
with the loose ends and create meaning in the in-betweens in her newly woven
mesh work - that is what we call
Sarah looping a thread.
So about making new worlds with transformative becomings,
starting to walk slowly or finding the strength
to say no to things, seem as small things, but for the individuals in our story
it made whole new worlds for them.
We are aware that using these prototypes require time, space
and such a thing as electricity, and that is not for everyone.
This is built into these prototypes.
We see it.
But the value of soma design,
the possibility of living a better life - that is for everyone.
And own storytelling as a method, this is one first attempt
to treat this entangled data, and it can surely be improved
and it is just one alternative among many others
that in this case helped us to keep the wholeness of the individual experience
in this entangled data from soma design.
Thank you very much for listening.