Form Empowered by Touch, Movement, and Emotion - Eunjeong Jeon
A great many of our emotions, and in particular comfort can be evoked by our experience of movement during everyday activities for example, touching, wrapping, and walking. This is because our perception of emotion is drawn from how our bodies experience or interact with the world, whether it is objects, living beings, situations, or events, intermingled with sensory experience and action (Merleau-Ponty 1962). It is argued that the quality of these movements can inform and steer design practice towards an emotion- and sensorimotor-driven approach in fashion design since it provides a rich source of stimuli for the creation of new garment forms that establish the body as a primary source and an essential structure from which to understand the nature of bodily interaction.
In this lecture I am going to present two case studies from the research project entitled ‘Form Empowered By Touch, Movement, and Emotion’, which draws on the nature of experiential bodily knowing and understanding that is generated through the phenomenological way people touch, move, and feel in the process of interacting with an object. By researching-through-design the project aimed to contribute to the discourse on comfort in clothing by investigating the influence of the tactile (haptic) experience, kinesthetic interaction, and emotion. The investigation expands the knowledge of design practice by focusing on how a garment empowers the body to touch, feel and move in order to enhance self-expression and self-therapy. In this sense the garment is an interactive object that can contribute in the development of new design ideas by opening a new space for users. Garments can be created with users or even by users, ‘designing experience or interactions’ in relation to their need for comfort in an everyday living environment.
Eunjeong Jeon is a Post Doctoral researcher in TU/e Industrial Design and a member of Designing Quality in Interaction group.
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