Boards Hit Back: Reflecting on Martial Arts Practices Through Soma Design.
I am Yoav Luft.
I would like to start by thanking my collaborators Pavel and Kia for their help.
In this project I designed a series of prototypes to use in my martial arts training using soma
design, research-through design process, and my martial arts practice as the departure
point for exploration.
The process culminated in an interactive wooden dummy named Koinryō.
Documenting my training sessions in notes, videos and pictures three categories of results
were found: material qualities for designing for martial arts; movement qualities that
emerged from interacting with Koinryō; and changes to myself, as a martial artist, and
to my practice.
An overarching theme of all these results is the tensions that arise between the normative
values and practices of my martial art and the encounter with the prototypes.
In the material qualities, our data uncovered interesting contradictions,
for example, how the decision to use fragile materials such as natural wood affected the
unfolding interaction.
Tension arises between the martial art practice of breaking materials to show physical prowess
versus the designerly normative view of artefacts as precious, costly and irreplaceable.
fragility cultivated a relationship of care between me and Koinryō: I stopped training
to check on suspicious noises, similarly to how I would have stopped if my partner had
tapped; and I constantly adjusted and improved upon
the artefact, to fix damage or prevent future damage.
Allowing for fragility made care relationships more visible, but it exists even when using
more durable equipment like a boxing bag.
In training with Koinryō a multitude of different movements had emerged.
Some movements were simply within the norms of my martial arts practice, Bujinkan Budō
Taijutsu.
For example, Koinryō’s swinging movement was designed to encourage me to explore and
practice distancing and manoeuvring my whole body, rather than just using my hands, which
is greatly valued in my martial art.
After some adjusting, Koinryō managed to elicit that at times.
I could also identify myself performing adapted versions of specific techniques, such as in
this short clip: I block while increasing distance, and then counter attack over the
attacking arm.
But not all movements were afforded by Koinryō.
For example, in this clip I am capturing Koinryō’s arm in the set-up for a throw called “ganseki-nage”.
I never repeated it with later prototypes.
Koinryō’s bracing to the ceiling resulted in weird, uncanny experiences: How do you
throw something that is rigidly braced?
Some movements were disabled due to obvious reasons: In this video I practice O-soto-gari
with a boxing bag.
But Koinryō reaches only down to my midriff, making this kind of practice impossible.
Some of the movements that emerged in training with Koinryō were completely novel and occasionally
unwished for.
For example, I found myself mimicking this hand movement from Wing-chun, a different
martial art.
Seeing how this movement was elicited by my design made me realise that it is, in fact,
in tension with the norms of my martial art: I should be using my whole body to affect
Koinryō, but instead I was using only my hands.
[video of opening up] Other movements seemed in-situ like normative
performance of Taijutsu techniques, but when I analysed the videos I noticed how Koinryō
encouraged me to make movements which would open me up for risks if it was sparring with
a human sparring partner.
We question also whether Koinryō’s otherness might sensitise my reactions to cues that
are meaningless in human-to-human martial arts training, like the sound of Koinryō’s
pneumatic pumps before each movement.
The dynamic unfoldings of Koinryō’s movement sequences had to be repeatedly experienced
and redesigned in order to comply not only with specific prescribed movement, but also
to adhere to the underlying philosophy of the whole practice.
While in taijutsu we practise and even encourage variations, these must adhere to the overarching
values and strategies conveyed in the practice.
Engaging in design work on Koinryō helped to develop a better somaesthetic appreciation
for my own established martial art practice.
It helped to develop new training exercises; it improved my practice through reflection;
and it encouraged me to articulate tacit norms of Taijutsu practice.
The defamiliarization exercises I explored during the design process opened up new possibilities
for my normative training.
For example, using branches and other markers to denote trajectories of imagined incoming
attacks and practising positioning my body in the correct alignment for a counter-attack
; or using branches to practise elbow locks,
applying the lock against the branch until it breaks [video].
The analysis of my interactions with Koinryō (and with earlier prototypes) served a role
in reflecting about my own practice, helping me to identify deviations in my movements
from the norms, and train on improving my practice.
Finally, through the design process I articulated tacit norms of my martial arts practice.
Reflecting and analysing movements in disguise drove me to articulate what kind of norms
were challenged and why.
The “wing-chun” movement clarified that using only the hands is in tension with normative
values.
Practising breaking branches, on the other hand, articulates to me the social norms of
training with a partner, one that prescribes that we shouldn’t hurt our training partners
even when training techniques that are intended to cause severe bodily harm.
The notion that introducing a new technology into an established bodily practice will change
the practice and practitioners is nothing new and well attested in HCI literature.
What we present here, instead, is an account of how such a change occurs, and how tensions
between the designed technology and the existing norms can help the expert practitioner to
articulate the norms of their practice in order to improve, enrich or revamp it.
We claim that the methods used in soma design can be useful to achieve exactly that.
By engaging in reflection, defamiliarization, deconstruction and reconstruction through
design of training aids and new exercises, bodily practice experts can transform themselves
and their practice.
My autobiographical account presents a possible path for cultivating one's somaesthetic appreciation
to their intelligent or artistic habit by breaking apart from the routine and challenging
it and our entrenched assumptions.
Finally, we challenge an idea that is often implied in design works that involve experts
that the expert is unchanging, an anchoring element for
the design process.