Who Controls Who? Embodied Control Within Human–Technology Choreographies

Abstract

In this article we explore issues of embodied control that relate to current and future technologies in which body movements function as an instrument of control. Instead of just seeing ourselves in control, it is time to consider how these technologies actually control our moving bodies and transform our lived spaces. By shifting the focus from devices to choreographies among devices, we perform a theoretical analysis of the multidimensional aspects that reside within embodied interaction with technology. We suggest that it is beneficial to acknowledge and reformulate the phenomena of embodied control that go beyond the instrumental user-to-device control scheme. Drawing upon the phenomenology of the body, ecological psychology, and embodied cognitive science, we identify three different dimensions of embodied control: instrumental, experiential, and infrastructural. Design implications of this theoretical model are also discussed.