This study was part of my research at the NTNU on bodily experience, exergames and technological entanglement. It formed part of the research papers;
- Louise Petersen Matjeka. Designing Movement-Based Play and Games – in Theory and Practice. June 2022. PhD thesis. Norwegian University of Science and Technology. ISBN: 978-82-326-6643-0
- Louise Petersen Matjeka, Mads Hobye, and Henrik Svarrer Larsen. 2021. Restraints as a Mechanic for Bodily Play. In CHI ’21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press, Online. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445622
- Louise Petersen Matjeka and Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller. 2020. Designing for Bodily Play Experiences Based on Danish Linguistic Connotations of “Playing a Game.” In Proceedings of International Conference on Human Computer Interaction and Play CHI PLAY, ACM, Online. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145.3410404/3414264
Research topic
As part of my research on bodily experiences of and entanglement with technologies et the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), I found the performance event Infoerno particularly interesting for my research. It is a case of people volunteering to be controlled by a (very) forceful technology as part of someone else’s performance.
Problem field
What was the participants’ motivation for voluntarily letting over the control of their upper body to an unknown ‘other’? How was the bodily experience of being controlled by technology?
Method
An ethnographic study in the wild of the Inferno event at the metamorf festival in Trondheim. I observed the performances and did anonymous ad-hoc interviews with the participants afterwards.
The study was documented as jottings, photographs and video recordings of the performance. The interviews were audio recorded with notes and later transcripts.
I also kept an autoethnographic account of the event. I documented it in a personal essay that I used later for analysis.
Analysis
The video recordings were divided into annotated sequences, the photographs were also annotated similarly, and the audio recordings were transcribed into text. These data formed the empirical data together with the notes. The empirical data was analysed using thematic analysis.
Results
The interviewees’ main motivation for participating in the event was to experience something extraordinary with friends. It was an awe for new and unknown technology, while the playful setting of the performance added thrill and a feeling of safety – it was only for fun. The bodily experience was reported as hilarious, ecstatic and seducing. One almost felt dizzy.
None of the interviewees expressed concern about being controlled by an ‘other’. This is interesting from a posthumanist perspective, as our adoption of and entanglement with technology can be seemingly and more uncritically incorporated when it happens in a playful setting. Moreover, this experience raised some ethical questions considering the willing suspense of control to technology when “we are only playing”.
The results are described in detail in the research papers listed above. Below are some of my recordings.
