Soma Design and Politics of the Body

Abstract

Human reasoning often revolves around dichotomies: male-female, rational-irrational, emotion-thinking, body-mind, white-black, and so on. Through our design processes, we often repeat and reinforce these patterns. We argue that a stronger somatic engagement with the digital materials might open the design space in different manners, thereby bypassing some of these ready-made conceptualizations. Through a soma design stance we have attempted to address: dualism; feminist qualities such as pluralism and participation; addressing and counteracting privilege; and how to get closer to our bodies and our selves instead of letting data and interaction distance ourselves from our bodies, emotion, and experience.