I wonder if the 'starting point' framed by the statement:
>To anwer Kristina Höök philosophical question:
>: is it possible to use bio-sensors and create for embodied interactions
>that relate to our whole selves - subject/ object, body/mind,
>rational/irrational?
....bears close examination?
In the first instance it assumes that there is a divided self articulated by concepts such as subject/object and mind/body. In fact if one were to accept this is there a 'whole self' if it requires technology and the intervention of an artist to reunite these elements? Where would you place certain divides, for instance if I were to have an 'irrational' fear of spiders and I saw one my height beat doubled where might the notions of rational/irrational be situated? For that matter on what basis would these divides be bridged?
Philosophically its perfectly possible to argue perception is extended, which then challenges notions of subject/object as being a construct of the way we tend to think about things.... never mind notions of a mind/body divide.
I feel that there is a very great danger of easy assumptions being made here... I think one has to be clear about the basis upon which these claims are made before one embarks on research that seeks to investigate them.
>What is really missing though is an accurate map of how the data should
>be interpreted. (so what embodiment means is much harder a question to answer).
This seems to me to be an important question, but once again should we not first be asking whether it is possible to map this data so that it represents emotion? It strikes me that we often take time to work out the emotions that we are experiencing ourselves, why is it that a series of data streams looking at things such as heart rate and galvanic skin response should reveal these things more quickly? I don't know if there was ever a robotic psychoanalyst in a Woody Allen movie but this seems to me what is being suggested here. Emotions alter qualitatively and wrap themselves around things and each other, emotion can colour a day and make me view the world differently. There also seems to be an assumption of a teleological trajectory here, emotion affects bio function, which can be mapped via its data. I have days when things such as my health affects my mood, here we might claim emotion 'maps' physiology....
Now I also think its possible to work as an artist with these technologies without asking these questions, however since some of them have been asked...
best
Mark
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