Draft:Bodioid

The "Bodioid artifact" philosophy delves into the technological and philosophical aspects of intelligent wearables, providing valuable insights into this field.

Introduction

The concept of 'bodioid' was initially proposed by Professor XuJiang, who leads the Design Engineering and Computation Lab at the College of Design and Innovation of Tongji University. From the sole static state to dynamic stability, as the tool for individual self-expression, artifacts reveal the specific forms of self-reflection and self-discovery, becoming the medium of humans objectifying their needs and wishes.

Technology shapes existence and becomes the core strength of post-human constructing themselves.

Technology generates human’s time and space structure: memories and knowledge extend through abiological mediums, making humans become historical existence. The evolution and extension of technology constantly create the essence of humans, which achieves the outside development of the body’s spatial structure. While tool is invented, humans overcome their initial shortcuts and build up a tight connection with the world.

Theory resources of bodioid artifact

Currently, the concept of "wearables" is often centered around technology, based on a logical empiricist stance, defining it as computing, sensing, and interacting devices attached to the surface of the body from an external, third-person perspective, which fails to fully express the coexistence of wearables and humans. Existing between the realm of technology and the body, a "bodioid" relationship gradually emerges, transcending wearables' objective calculation of the body and the world. Human forms and needs are mapped onto the structure and function of artifacts, while the presence of artifacts subtly changes human body composition, behavioral habits, and even social and cultural concepts. The body and artifacts share a natural similarity and mutual construction. We inhabit the world through our bodies, shaping an artificial nature with the body as a scale. Meanwhile, technology becomes an extension of the body, facilitating the connection between people and reality, and co-shaping how people are presented in the world and how the world is manifested to them. The ways in which artifacts are used and experienced are an inseparable part of our existence.

Bodioid design

Design is a concrete form of Bodioid construction.

Bodioid design transcends mere delineations of artifact functionality and structure, instead engaging in a profound excavation of the intrinsic interrelations between the body and artifacts, thereby effectuating a reconstitution of their modes of existence. Designers assume the role of textual intermediaries facilitating dialogue and interaction between individuals and artifacts, thereby manifesting the collective intentions of users within design. Simultaneously, this engagement engenders encounters between designers and users within lived environments, fostering a dynamic interplay and fusion among designers, users, artifacts, and contextual usage settings.

The essence of Bodioid design lies in the reshaping of existence and meaning. Examination of technological artifacts necessitates more than the adoption of an analytical, objectivist perspective, which construes them as ready-to-hand, externally existing objects. Phenomenology, with its call to "return to the things themselves," offers novel insights: the existence of things is neither solely grounded in their intrinsic essence nor confined to the objectivity perceived through subjective representation, but rather emerges within the relationality between subject and object, where objects simultaneously possess an intrinsic, "ready-to-hand," mine-ness, and bodioid.  Design, to a certain extent, unveils the similar essence of both humans and artifacts: it is through the act of creating the objective world that humans truly demonstrate their existence as a species existence; it is only through encounters within the lifeworld, entangled with the body, that artifacts truly acquire their enduring significance.

The phenomenological body becomes the scale of creation and the core of design. Bodioid design, through mediating and regulating human perception and action, situates artifacts within body schema, transforming the design subject from artifacts to subjective experiences, and redirecting design objectives from the technological realm to the living world, thereby extending the spatiotemporal dimensions of bodily domains. Bodioid artifacts emerge convergently within the dynamic interaction between body and world, crystallizing multidimensional cohesion in the dimensions of time and space. Temporally, they manifest as a shared experience of bodily time and the temporal extension of external phenomena; spatially, they manifest as the intertwining and superimposition of bodily space and phenomenal space. "Body Computing" thus serves as a representation of this construction.

Frame of Bodioid Design

Through extension and mirroring, Bodioid achieves the coupling of bodily intentions and technological intentions. The ongoing emergence of technology continuously shapes the human essence, constituting how subjects perceive and reveal the world. Technological intentionality encompasses a dual meaning: on the one hand, it represents the usability assigned to technology at its inception, and on the other hand, it signifies the directional meaning of technology when it is in use. The "scripts" inscribed by design permeate the technological cognition and choices of users in their production and daily life, exerting an actively positive moral shaping effect. Bodioid design establishes a continuous interaction and construction among "self-existence-others". The system of objects is interwoven within this framework, embodying the philosophical implications of "The Internet of Bodies" (IoB).