Somatosensory wearable technology in the dance making process: investigating digital touch in the formation of creative movement and kinaesthetic awareness

The purpose of this research was to create, use, and study digital touch stimuli in the creative context of making dance. This was enabled by designing, producing, and using two prototypes in workshops with students, experienced dance artists, and educators. This research collected qualitative data via embodied methods, including video footage, the researcher as the participant/facilitator, field notes, and semi-structured interviews. Combining the movement analysis with the participants' perceptions of this experience led to the coding and identification of trends and themes over two projects.

These findings reveal that technologically assisted creativity in improvisation forms part of a multisensorial pre-reflective consciousness, that marks the continuum of present, past, and future. Subsequently, the coded loop of touch stimuli develops into a reference point, creating a heightened awareness of the moving body. The kinaesthetic awareness involved when wearing such a tool/aid became complicated by passive touch as the vibrations created through digital touch disrupted the perception of internal and external boundaries to the body. Consequently, the active presence of another, functioning as a focal or relational point for movement, impacted the experience of the body moving through somatoperception.

With longer periods of use, the participants developed various relationships with the prototypes which are framed as working ‘through, with, against, and alongside’ and involving different attentional states in the making of dance. Perceptually, the use of prototypes dissolves the boundaries of the body, altering the participants’ understanding of time and space and their use of interoception in their creative responses.