Your Body of Water: A Somaesthetic Display for Embodied Reflection

In response to the Quantified Self movement, which uses body data for self-tracking and self-improvement, this thesis explores how aestheticized heart rate data can be used to get us more in touch with our bodies and how we are feeling. Utilizing somaesthetics, an interdisciplinary field with roots in philosophy that combines the soma (the living body) with aesthetics (our sensory perception and appreciation), this thesis explores how we can design interactions that help us to reflect on our embodied experience. Through a research through design process using somaesthetic appreciation design characteristics, I designed an interactive display that retrieved heart rate wirelessly with computer vision and then visualized one’s heart rate as water. The display was evaluated for somaesthetic characteristics using system critiques, and this evaluation method was found to be a timely and resource-effective way of evaluating a device for self reflection and embodiment