*Metaformance Studies – METABODY project*

*International METABODY <http://www.metabody.eu>Forum – IMF 2015 – Weimar,*

*March 5-6 2015*

*Bauhaus University*
* Weimar, Germany*

*Affordances of Symbiosis – **Rethinking interaction and the immeasurable
potential of the body in the age of ubiquitous computing.*

The Mouse has been in use for the last 50 years as the main interaction
device of the computer. Although HCI has been well-established as a branch
of study starting from 80’s, only lately did our relation to computers
start changing with mobile devices’ touch screens. Meanwhile, computing
has become ubiquitous and, while still imprecise, increasingly we are
interacting with them based on bodily control, from public doors to TV
control to interactive art works.

The teapot has a handle, the mouse has a shape that fits in the palm, books
have pages to turn, while computer interaction is becoming increasingly
based not only on physical objects that reduce movement to very discrete
traceable parameters, but on bodily gestures captured by cameras and
sensors.

How can we reinvent affordances of the body in its continuous motion while
challenging the reductive approach of ubiquitous computing?

Software is re-shaping the 21st century’s concept of the body. It is
converting it into an object of measurement and calculation, reducing it to
numbers. At the same time, machine perception of the body may blur the
boundary between “normal” and “abnormal”.   Reflecting on disability, we
question the premise of software. From this perspective, what is commonly
referred to as disability, with all of its “negative” implications, becomes
a positive quality of difference and plurality. It is an appreciation of
the body for its yet unknown qualities; for what it can do, instead of what
it is.

We are asking if a new definition of body — one which removes the
boundaries between normal and abnormal, able and disabled, measurable and
immeasurable — can be based on a redefinition of affordances. Affordance
as the indeterminate potential of the body to move in yet unthinkable ways.
Affordance as an open-ended potential of relation.

How can we facilitate such affordances in our deterministic and
probabilistic world of ubiquitous control? “What can a body do?” becomes,
“What can the affordances of the body become”, understood as motion and
relation, as open-ended potential, as relational ecologies, in our
symbiotic life.

*Topics:*

  – rethinking digital/physical affordances in the posthuman/cybernetic era
  – digital affordances, ubiquitous surveillance and control – affordances
  of capture and prediction
  – digital affordances and movement capture/reduction – the interface
  – digital affordances and affective production – emoticon culture and
  ubiquitous commercial music
  – Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, AI, robotics, videogaming –
  affordances of simulation
  – screens, keyboards, mouses, cameras – expanding the renaissance
  paradigm & control affordances
  – visual affordances and the fixation of perception
  – manual affordances and subjective control
  – ubiquitous computing and mobile devices – invisible affordances of
  control
  – perceptual history of digital affordances, from Greek theatre
  architecture and Euclidean geometry, to Renaissance perspective, cameras,
  mechanism and information.
  – wearables, internet of things, smart homes and the new landscape of
  digital affordances – the new revolution of control and ubiquitous
  surveillance
  – genetics and epigenetics as evolutionary potentials for interaction
  – nanoaffordances
  – embodiment in the digital era – software and hardware as embodied
  affordances
  – perceptual affordances and sensory hierarchies: vision, hearing,
  touch, crossmodal and multimodal approaches
  – enactive cognition and affordance theories
  – affordances and embodied knowledge
  – interaction and intra-action in affordance-design
  – towards a new ecology of affordances – ethics of perception beyond
  visual domination
  – diffuse/indeterminate affordances and openended relational ecologies
  – towards an architecture of indeterminate affordances
  – non-functional design, indeterminate architecture and diffuse
  affordances
  – interaction, palpability and synaesthesia
  – affordances of crossmodal sensing
  – interactive environments and inclusion

*KEYNOTE SPEAKER:   *

*Petra Kuppers*

is a disability culture activist, a community performance artist, and a
widely recognized author. She is a professor at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she teaches performance studies and disability
studies, and she is on the faculty of Goddard College MFA program in
Interdisciplinary Arts. She is the Artistic Director of The Olimpias, an
artists’ collective that creates collaborative, research-focused
environments open to people with physical, emotional, sensory and cognitive
differences and their allies. Her book about The Olimpias arts-based
research practices, “Disability Culture and Community Performance: Find a
Strange and Twisted Shape,” won the biennial Sally Banes Award from the
American Association for Theatre Research.

*SUBMISSIONS:   *

Please send an abstract of your submission, along with a short biography,
to: conference@metabody.eu.

*Submission Deadline:   February 10, 2015.*

*www. metabody.eu* <http://www.metabody.eu>