Affiliation:
Institute of Design
Technology is getting ever closer to the body, impinging on how we understand, use and research it and ‘key human affordances are now being altered' (Thrift 2005: 248). With the recent developments from machine learning that has catapulted AI (albeit at this point mainly LLMs) into every nook and cranny of our contemporary lives, there is a new and critical need for understanding the role of experience anew – how we move and how we perform today (Frauenberger 2019). Goffman talked about the agency we have in performing our everyday lives (1959) and Hewitt has described the intricate and sophisticated social choreography that enables us to navigate society (2005). Design has an increasing role to play in the design of what people experience, what people see and how people move. The skills of the core members of the research group are from professional practice. This group springs out of a shared concern with how tacit craft knowledge can be shared and developed from the practice itself, across pedagogy, spectacle, rituals and performance.