[-empyre-] design become unrecognizable to itself

[Susan Kozel]

A couple of days ago Johannes asked me:

Thus, my question to Susan would be – what kind of architectures of interaction (not consumption) are imagined
when you teach or practice your work, how do they relate to past-times/future-times and the fabric of
our activities in life, vital and social processes. what is recognized, or should be recognized rather than
becoming natural and familiar (and here Meisenheimer does not offer a political reading of the consequences of alignment).

I reflected on this question posed by Johannes, and then became caught up in work and what felt like much flinging myself through city space in the process of conducting my life. The truth is I don't have an answer, if this means a homogeneous and authoritative stance on how to tackle this topic, but I can offer some thoughts.

Starting with my acts of flinging myself, my thoughts, objects, sometimes my daughter with me, on a bicycle through the city: the city cannot be anything but a set of kinaesthetic and affective trajectories for me. I cannot resonate with a notion of spatial order, but then I am a dancer philosopher and not an architect. I see affective flows and motion, and increasingly I am not able to choreograph these but am choreographed, perniciously and unceasingly, by them.

Writing on Spinoza, Deleuze said 'one slips in, enters into the middle, one takes up or lays down rhythms' - increasingly it is hard to lay down our own rhythms. If we combine this with Nigel Thrift's simple point that in cities we 'ignore affect at our peril' because we are affectively shaped by our structures and technologies increasingly and at all times. Perhaps this stance is similar to Meisenheimer's call to recognising vital and social processes rather than letting them be too familiar or natural (I have not read Meisenheimer, so Johannes can guide me here.)

Currently in my artistic work I try to set down alternate affective rhythms in cities, through movement improvisation and through using augmented reality browsers (in collaboration with skilled visual artist Jeannette Ginslov and others), or at least I try to call attention to the affective qualities that exist but have become familiar or invisible to us.

When I work with students on the Embodied Interaction course I try to offer an oblique approach to much design processes and design thinking. (It is worth mentioning that I teach in a Scandinavian context which already is one step removed from dominant human-computer-interaction culture of the North America). In effect I bring more of a phenomenological approach to designing interactive prototypes. There is still an emphasis on devices and we devote time to working with Arduino, but I try to open up space for speculation and critique.
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