Theme 2: Engaging with the sensory

The senses are emphasized differently in each case study. A broad range of senses (e.g. olfactory, touch, kinesthetic, vision, aural) is attended to in the Digital Arts case studies. Sensory metaphors are used in the Digital Arts and these bring the materiality of the body and its sensory possibilities into play, these re-think the body and the digital as part of a creative process and the multisensory dimensions of practice-based research are a significant resource for thinking and re-imagining the body, its boundaries and potentials. Social Sciences limited attention to the sensory fails to account for significant aspects of embodied experience. Attention to the sensory in these case studies has potential benefits for research on embodied interaction via:

1. More global ideas of embodiment environments and extending understanding of the body;
2. Showing new possibilities for sensory interaction with the digital;
3. Understanding and innovating how technology can be used to enhance the senses;
4. Generating metaphors and methods that draw on sensory experience (e.g. sensory maps, sensory probes).

Social Science approaches could benefit from more engagement with the sensory as a key aspect of human interaction, especially as the digital increasingly moves toward sensory-based interaction/interfaces.