Embodied Reality: being bodily
Last updated
Last updated
is a singer, electronic music producer and performer. Using wearable technology called the mi.mu gloves she controls all the effects on her voice, all electronic sounds inside her computer and reactive visual projections through using the movement of her body. In a mesmerising performance of her song ‘Surely’ she vivifies a 17th century love story based on a poem by Anne Bradstreet.
Laban Movement Analysis is a method and a language invented by Hungarian dancer, teacher and author Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) The method is used for observation, description, prescription, performance, interpretation, understanding and documentation of all varieties of human movement and its expression. It is used for the design and development of virtual reality experiences. For instance it can be used for character building of avatars in VR, for VR-therapy or for diagnostic tools. Laban Movement Analysis can be used to explore the full range of human condition.
article 7: Laban Movement Analysis made simple
Stacy Hurst talks about how we are constantly analysing body language and also talks about the relationship between body language and nonverbal communication. She also talks about how Dance Movement Therapists use Laban Movements to assess and observe clients with a clear objective lens, meet them in his/her movement patterns, and meet them in that 80% margin that humans implicitly understand. Body language communicates more than what we can express with words. The four categories for Laban are Body, Effort, Shape and space.
article 8: Movement Therapy: Analysing 'Body Language'
"My function was to be present, for them. I could do this by breathing, so that I could make the non-verbal communication possible", Marina Abramovic
The seven elements of building intense embodied experiences in VR are:
Pose: poses define our relationship to others and our relation to ourself. Think child pose in yoga, bring you back to your inner feelings of rest and safety.
Motion: motion shows the expressiveness of the body and it shows off the amount of immersion.
Exertion: the feats of exertion endurance make you invest in the experience physically. It takes discipline to perform and stay tuned into the experience. Think of holding your hands in the air for possibly hours on end (as the video explain for a speaking in tongues ritual).
Sound: reading the mood and gradually shifting/nudging the crowd into a mood.
Sync: synchronization of your actions with the crowd activates mirror neurons in your brain which intensifies the experience.
Touch: the closer people are in proximity the more intense the experience. Touch is the element that's most limited by current technology. We are long ways away from having hardware which can make it feel like another human has rested their palm on your forehead.
Breath: rhythmic regular deep breaths add to the intensity of the experience.
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Embodied sketching encompasses ideation methods that are grounded in, and inspired by, the lived experience and includes the social and spatial settings as design resources in the sketching. Embodied sketching is also based on harnessing play and playfulness as the principal way to elicit creative physical engagement. We present three different ways to implement and use embodied sketching in the application domain of co-located social play. These include bodystorming of ideas, co-designing with users, and sensitizing designers. The latter helps to uncover and articulate significant, as well as novel embodied experiences, whilst the first two are useful for developing a better understanding of possible design resources.
