Una Noche con Ramona and Joakinator in the Feel My Body Festival
The 3rd of March was the presentation of the Performance Una Noche con Ramona and Joakinator: A Technological Embodyment of Onyric World at the Feel My Body festival, held at Link, Bologna, Italy. Una Noche con Ramona is an interactive performance. Ramona is a “Love Influencer”, a “heroine of love”, a “collective body” that exists on the net, feeds through networks, feeds on desires and fantasies, travelling in our collective dreams. Through a ritual, she is embodied in those who wish to experience it.The audience has the role to imagine and, if they wish, to interact and co-create Ramona. This performance arises from real experiences. Ramonahas her Instagram page (IG: ramona_abate) and interacts with the people who write to them. The play is inspired by these relationships filtered through the technological medium. Director and performer: Raffaella MenchettiPerformer and multimedia creator: Joaquín DíazPlaywright: Sara SerranoPerformer and creator: Francesca VantuPerformer: Sofia GallianoOnline performer: Elissa Joakinator: Technological Embodiment of Onirical Worlds The Joakinator is a performative and technological device that allows us to introduce concepts, ideas and dreams into the body of the performer and explore them through their movements. Through this corporeal device, the integration of the oneiric world will be explored in the piece “Joakinator: Oniric Body”, turning it into a crossover point between consciousness and dreaming. The interactive device uses muscle sensors, pressure sensors and accelerometers that feed an A.I. system which translates the movements of the performer into a control/decontrol over the sound material. This performance explores different sound materials,for this occasion, the audios are texts read from the performer’s dream diaries and psychoanalysis sessions. This archive has been collected over a period of 4 years. The Joakinator is an electro-shamanic device which helps to materialize inner worlds into the movements of the artist’s body. The performer becomes a shamanic cyborg that translates these inner worlds with his movements, serving as a hatch for the audience to get a glimpse of these worlds. Original idea:Joaquín R. Díaz, Mexico (Interactive design, Roboticsand Performance)Performance (still work in process):Joaquín R. Díaz & Franccesca VantùRaffaella Menchetti, Italy (Dramaturgist, Performer,actress and visual artist)Technological Research:Marta Timon, Spain (Computer Scientist, andbiometric signal acquisition)Pedro López, Spain (Reactive Shaders andElectronic Engineering) These projects have been funded and supported by: Sneo.es, Hamlet.Love and BODYinTRANSIT ERC project
Hacking the senses: body transformation experiences with wearables, in t3chfest 2023
Our talk Hacking the senses: body transformation experiences with wearables will be part of the t3chfest 2023 program on March 3rd!
Towards Advancing Body Maps as Research Tool in Interaction Design
Towards Advancing Body Maps as Research Tool in Interaction Design was published in the TEI ’23: Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction and presented by Laia Turmo Vidal in the Crafts and Design track of the conference. Abstract: Body maps are a popular tool in body-centric design, facilitating a sensitization and expression of felt sensations and emotions. Yet, they also bring forth assumptions about the body and our somatic experience. Based on an open and exploratory design ideation inquiry, we have started to explore how body maps could be advanced so as to cater to a plurality of bodies and aspects that shape somatic experiences. We present an annotated portfolio featuring six design themes (temporality, sociality, representativeness, granularity, context, and focus). These themes help us examine implicit assumptions of current body maps, and offer possible alternatives for what future body maps could become. We contribute our themes, inspirational design ideas and practical design techniques to help craft novel body maps. Our contributions can serve as inspiration to others, towards advancing body maps as a research tool for body-centric interaction design. You can watch the presentation recording below:
Exploring multisensory integration of non-naturalistic sounds on body perception in young females with eating disorders symptomatology: a study protocol
We published Exploring multisensory integration of non-naturalistic sounds on body perception in young females with eating disorders symptomatology: a study protocol in the Journal of Eating Disorders.
C4DM-CogSci Workshop on Body-centred perspectives on human-human and human-machine interaction
Ana Tajadura-Jiménez presented The Hearing Body: Sound-driven Body Transformation Experiences Applications for Emotional and Physical Health in the C4DM-CogSci Workshop on Body-centred perspectives on human-human and human-machine interaction. It occurred at the Queen Mary University of London, on February 8th, 2023. The following was the abstract of the talk: Body perceptions are important for people’s motor, social and emotional functioning. Critically, neuroscientific research has shown that body perceptions are not fixed, but are continuously updated through sensorimotor information. In this talk, I will present work from our group on how sound and other sensory feedback on one’s body and actions can be used to alter body perception, creating Body Transformation Experiences. I will talk about how neuroscientifically grounded insights that body perceptions are continuously updated through sensorimotor information may contribute to the design of novel body-centred technologies to support people’s needs and for behaviour change. I will then present various studies from our current project, Magic OutFit, aimed to inform the design of wearable technology in which sensory-driven changes in body perception are used to enhance behavioural patterns and emotional states in the context of exertion. I will discuss how apart from the focus on real-life applications, novel technologies for body sensing and sensory feedback may also become a research tool for investigating how emotional and multisensory processes shape body perception. I will conclude by identifying new challenges and opportunities that this line of work presents, some of which we are addressing in our current ERC project BODYinTRANSIT.
Workshop: Embodied exploration and ideation of multisensory interaction with immersive data representations
We are holding a workshop to experience first hand and to explore how we can design multisensory interactions with immersive data representations in a different and innovative way, in particular, by using embodied design methods.
Call for Participants: Paid Study on Technology and Body Perception
Would you like to help us in our research on technology and body perception? We are looking for participants for our study on body perception where we use sound and a suit with sensors.
AcademiaNet – The Portal to Excellent Women Academics
The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) nominated Ana Tajadura-Jiménez to be featured in AcademiaNet, a database of profiles of excellent female researchers from all disciplines. In this way, Ana joins the list of more than 3600 outstanding women researchers from Europe and beyond. From the AcademiaNet website: Women are still seriously under-represented in leadership positions in academia. Only 26 % of professorships in Europe are held by women; in some countries, the share of women is even lower (SheFigures 2021). The figures are similarly low for key committees and commissions that decide on research awards, the appointment of professors and research funding. There is now a consensus in politics and science that the under-representation of women in academic leadership positions represents an untapped potential. However, there is a lack of tools to help decision-makers find proven female experts. AcademiaNet is intended to be such an instrument. The database contains the profiles of women academics from all disciplines. Decision-makers can use the database to search for the best in their field. This makes it easier to fill scientific committees with female experts, to ask female speakers for a panel and to identify candidates for appointment procedures and awards. AcademiaNet is also a useful tool for journalists and conference organizers who are looking for proven female experts. Here you can find Ana’s profile in AcademiaNet. Congratulations!
We are recruiting! A PhD position in HCI at i_mBODY lab, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
We are happy to announce a fully-funded PhD position in HCI at the i_mBODY lab, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, as part of the ERC Consolidator Grant Horizon2020 project BODYinTRANSIT: Sensory-driven body transformation experiences on-the-move, led by Prof. Ana Tajadura-Jiménez . PhD in Human-Computer Interaction: Body Transformation Experiences (supervised by Ana Tajadura-Jiménez) Duration: 36 months (+ optional 4th year; through renewable 1-year contracts). Application deadline: 31st January 2023. Start: March 2023. Fully-funded PhD position
Científicas e Innovadoras: Outstanding Women Scientists and Innovators
Ana Tajadura-Jiménez has joined the list of Oustanding Women Scientists and Innovators (Científicas e Innovadoras), which is an initiative by the Ministry of Science and Innovation (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación), through its Women and Science Unit (Unidad de Mujeres y Ciencia) and in collaboration with the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología, FECYT). This platform makes the work of Spanish women scientists visible as a reference in the world of research. You can visit the website here: Científicas e Innovadoras, and Ana’s profile here: Ana Tajadura-Jiménez | Mujeres Científicas. Congratulations!