ArCHI: engaging with museum objects spatially through whole body movement

TLDR: An interactive installation developed and implemented in a museum context and presented, which demonstrates the need to develop a better understanding of performative interactions generated through full body movement and its subjective spatial relationships, is presented.

Abstract: We explore body movement as a medium. We investigate how body movement may help define the quality of human experience in particular, when mediated through pervasive digital technologies. In this paper, we present an interactive installation developed and implemented in a museum context. We outline the iterative design methodology and compare data from the deployment. We highlight in particular the importance of taking into account full body and performative interactions as an important factor of human experience. We integrate approaches that explore the embodied, and the performative nature of human interactions and describe an attempt to develop new ways when designing for emergent experience and interactivity enabled through depth sensing (with Kinect) that go beyond traditionally applied methods within Human Computer Interaction (HCI). While the users study was successful in identifying emergent issues related to embodied interactions and social behavior patterns in the museum, our analysis highlights influences on usage and behavior patterns including the social dimension, the physical setting, and the type of body movement it affords. The paper concludes that we should rethink the relationship between the body and space through mediated interactions. The implementation outcome demonstrates the need to develop a better understanding of performative interactions generated through full body movement and its subjective spatial relationships. We suggest that these attempts will help inform further experiments with depth sensing and will have a critical impact on current research in HCI, and on future attempts to developing digitally mediated interactions when designing responsive environments in a social public setting.