Somatic Freedoms: Reconfiguring Human-Machine Ethical Relations
Time: Fri 2026-08-28 09.00
Location: F3 (Flodis), Lindstedtsvägen 26 & 28, Stockholm
Video link: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/65090324858?pwd=HL1VU8vYZrIZ2ssNb5eKw4OMbDnB34.1
Language: English
Subject area: Human-computer Interaction
Doctoral student: Rachael Garrett , Medieteknik och interaktionsdesign
Opponent: Associate Professor, Docent Katherine Harrison, Department of Thematic Studies (TEMA), Linköping University
Supervisor: Professor Kristina Höök, Medieteknik och interaktionsdesign; Professor Airi Lampinen, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University
QC 20260602
Abstract
Somatic freedoms are ethical commitments to bodies as whole, living and corporeal subjectivities within processes of research and design. They view ethical sensibilities as grounded in our bodies and felt experiences, and intimately shaped by our interpersonal, socio-cultural, and political relations. This position argues that embodied ethical knowledge is implicit in many aspects of research and design practice, as well as our interactions with machines. I explore felt experiences of ethics across three multidisciplinary art and design collaborations: (i) Robots, Dance, Different Bodies, (ii) Embrace Angels, and (iii) How to Train Your Drone. Across these projects, I investigate how misalignments between ethical sensibilities can invite deeper modes of allyship; how frictions between sensibilities can be engaged to forge bridges between interdisciplinary practitioners; how sensibilities are practiced within human-machine interactions; and how we might design machines that can support bodies in uncovering potential pathways to ethical transformation.
Across these projects, I chart the development of somatic freedoms as ethical commitments to bodies and the vibrant, material and corporeal pursuit of change and transformation. These are commitments to creating conditions in which transformation is supported, enhancing the possibilities available to bodies to achieve change, facilitating the processes through which bodies transform their relations with the world, and by extension, change how they are constituted within those relations. My papers demonstrate processes of human-machine ethical reconfiguration: the ongoing reorganisation of relations between bodies and machines through which ethical transformation can be realised. These processes require traversing the boundaries of our bodies within our relational engagements with the world around us, experiencing ourselves as subjects who move but also objects that are moved within those encounters. This is a process by which bodies can engage in the work of ethics, seek out better ways of relating to each other, meet new ethical challenges, and move towards conditions of flourishing.