Kristina Höök – Being well – body and place
“The tools we have change us fundamentally. They change our feelings and our cultures.”
Have you wondered why video conferencing still sucks? Because we are not just visual and auditory beings. The movements of our body are linked to our emotional processes. The tools we use impact our muscles, nervous systems, feelings, experiences and even our culture. Kristina Höök works at the Royal Institute of Technology where she studies Soma design, aesthetic and ethical wellness. Soma focuses on the fact that mind and body are not separate – how engaging with your senses will make you more present and will give you a richer life. She has been test designing products to develop this skill.
As designers, you leave a set of sedimented movements in design. You ask users to move, think and feel in certain ways. Somaesthetics is an approach to design that sees the mind and body as one. It is about designing with oneself, using one’s own soma in designing. It’s about being present in the world giving us a possibility to have richer experiences of the world we are living in. How might a lamp, a mat or even a corset help us change our way of being in the world?
