Queer/Crip Body Mapping

Expressing Dynamic Bodily Experiences with Data

Activities: Body Mapping, Somaesthetic Design, Collaborative Autoethnography

Year: 2024-25

Drawing on queer and disability theories alongside tangible body mapping techniques, we explore alternative ways of mapping embodied experiences and expressing affective sensations. Our collaborative autoethnographic approach incorporates sensors to trace our somatic experiences over time, pairing visualizations of contextual biodata with personal reflections in written or spoken form. We unpack how these alternative approaches to body mapping support reflecting on, communicating, and deepening understanding of embodied experiences by foregrounding temporal and situated aspects of embodied experience. We offer expanded body mapping methods by sharing a plurality of experiences that embrace queer and crip ways of knowing, foregrounding alternate temporal and spatial representations. This project is a collaboration with Sylvia Janicki, Tim Moesgen, Noura Howell, and Karen Anne Cochrane. 

Publications

Body mapping

deepening soma design

Body mapping, a well-established method in soma design, expresses embodied experiences otherwise difficult to articulate, allowing individuals to document sensations, emotions, and narratives directly onto a visual outline of the body through symbols, drawings and annotations. However, traditional body mapping methods have been critiqued for flattening experiences or universalizing representations of bodies.

In this project, we ask: how can we deepen approaches to body mapping from queer/crip perspectives by engaging with dynamic temporal and spatial qualities of bodily experiences? 

We explore alternative body maps in a four-part collaborative autoethnography, centering our respective lived experiences while dialogically finding intersections by articulating our experiences across differences. Our body maps incorporate sensors that trace our somatic experiences of gender, chronic illness, chronic pain, and neurodivergent sensory disabilities over time, in situated contexts, expressing the complex entanglement of bodies, feelings, and the social and physical environment.

Queer/Crip approaches

expressing alternative perspectives

To express queer and disability perspectives, we draw from queer/crip theories. Crip theory confronts ableist societal norms, emphasizing the value of diverse lived experiences of illness and disability. Queer theory challenges binaries and normative structures to embrace fluidity, messy abundances and radical cooperation. Together, queer/crip theories critique dominant narratives that marginalize non-normative bodies and experiences to foreground alternative ways of being and feeling. 

Here is an example of body mapping from the perspectives of queerness and chronic pain. I use force sensing resistors (FSRs) and a body tracking program in Touch Designer to track my movements and indicate feelings of embodied tension when I press on the sensors and hold my wrist against various parts of my body. 

I experimented with first one, then two force sensing resistors (FSRs) to enact felt sensations and emotional uncertainties dynamically, in space, and over time.

In her body maps, Sylvia expresses entanglements of environmental illness. She asks, how can body mapping reflect the messy, pervasive, and embodied feelings of toxicity? Further, how can it resist flattening spatial and temporal experiences to express chronicity, delay, disruption, and disorientation? 

To create her body maps, Sylvia uses a volatile organic compound (VOC) sensor attached to a face mask, a body detection library, and a visualization in p5.js. With the sensor visualization, she shows how toxic particles from the VOC sensor readings can accumulate in her body with each breath, expressing the porous, blurry boundary between her body and the environment.  

Design reflections

expanding body mapping

Together, we use sensor data to map temporal, spatial, and affective dimensions directly onto our bodies. We use these practices to express queer/crip embodied experiences, building on critiques of biosensing that erase embodied differences and construct false binaries of normalcy and deviance.

We contribute the following to expand body mapping methods:

1. We expand body mapping methods by incorporating queer/ crip perspectives to elevate alternative temporal and spatial bodily experiences.
2. We integrate sensor data as part of our body mapping approach to support dynamic temporal and spatial representations.
3. We highlight these approaches in resisting bounded individualism to extend beyond bodily boundaries and challenging fixity to engage with ongoing and dynamic felt experiences.

We share the remainder of our queer/crip body maps in our publication.

Email   ariggs00@gmail.com

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