Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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PAPERS: Thinking the Body through Technologies and Material Methods Location: McEwan Hall Auditorium Zoom Link Session Chair: Gozde Goncu Berk, University of California, Davis Session Chair: Theo Hughes-Riley, Nottingham Trent University | |
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Proximity Ruff: Rehabilitating relationality through postdigital bodies Università degli studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Italy Proximity Ruff explores embodied interaction and social care through a wearable device that translates human proximity into light. Designed within The Spark Design Research Studio (Naples, Italy), it reinterprets the historical ruff as a postdigital interface that re-educates the body to closeness after the pandemic. Generated through evolutionary algorithms and 3D-printed in bioplastic PLA, the piece embeds 72 LEDs and proximity sensors that visualize interpersonal distance. Beyond quantification, the luminous feedback materializes affective data, transforming social gestures into somatic awareness. Grounded in somaesthetic design and critical materiality, the project investigates how sensing systems and computational materials can mediate care, empathy, and bodily diversity. By merging digital fabrication and responsive matter, Proximity Ruff proposes an alternative notion of wearable technology, one that restores intimacy and reconfigures the postdigital body as a porous, relational, and emotionally intelligent system. View Paper: https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.879
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