From: A Fair Game? (TEI ‘24); also present in Tangible Affect (DIS ‘24) via Höök’s somaesthetic design.
Originally for: making an abstract condition felt rather than explained.
What it says
People describe inner states through the body — feeling blue, hot-headed, hopping mad — and those metaphors come from real bodily experience, shaped by culture. As a design method this runs in reverse:
- Decide what you want the audience to feel.
- Work backwards to the bodily action that produces that feeling.
- Choose an interaction form that already carries cultural memory — hauling on a rope, holding a passport, riding a horse.
In A Fair Game? that chain produces unfairness you feel in your arms rather than read on a wall label.
Why this is the leading candidate
Of the 28 concepts collected so far, this is the one that fits the most load-bearing joint. It is the only concept that connects what a work is about to what a body does without passing through explanation — and it is a procedure, not just something to cite.
It also lands directly on my own material: the controller as a cultural symbol is an embodied metaphor argument that I had been making for two years without the term.
How it holds up on my work
Untested. It has not yet been run on anything I made — which makes it the most important thing to try at ZHdK in the autumn.
One tolerance issue to watch: a controller’s cultural memory is competence and competition, not the social condition a rope carries. That may make it a harder metaphor to steer, not an easier one.