Embodying Data

This book investigates a new interactive data visualisation concept that employs traditional Chinese aesthetics as a basis for exploring contemporary digital technological contexts. It outlines the aesthetic approach, which draws on non-Western aesthetic concepts, specifically the Yijing and Taoist cosmological principles, and discusses the development of data-based digital practices within a theoretical framework that combines traditional Taoist ideas with the digital humanities. The book also offers a critique of the Western aesthetics underpinning data visualisation, in particular the Kantian sublime, which prioritises the experience of power over the natural world viewed at a distance. Taoist philosophy, in contrast, highlights the integration of the surface of the body and the surface of nature as a Taoist body, rather than promoting an opposition of mind and body. The book then explores the transformational potential between the human body and technology, particularly in creating an aesthetic approach spanning traditional Chinese aesthetics and gesture-based technology. Representing a valuable contribution to the digital humanities, the book helps readers understand data-based artistic practices, while also bringing the ideas of traditional Chinese aesthetics to Western audiences. In addition, it will be of interest to practitioners in the fields of digital art and data visualisation seeking new models.

To advance the epidemiological analysis of social inequalities in health, and of the ways in which population distributions of disease, disability, and death reflect embodied expressions of social inequality, this volume draws on articles published in the "International Journal of Health Services" between 1990 and 2000. Framed by ecosocial theory, it employs ecosocial constructs of "embodiment"; "pathways of embodiment"; "cumulative interplay of exposure, susceptibility, and resistance across the lifecourse"; and "accountability and agency" to address the question; and who and what drives current and changing patterns of social inequalities in health.

In an age of cloning, cyborgs, and biotechnology, the line between bodies and bytes seems to be disappearing. Data Made Flesh is the first collection to address the increasingly important links between information and embodiment, at a moment when we are routinely tempted, in the words of Donna Haraway, "to be raptured out of the bodies that matter in the lust for information," whether in the rush to complete the Human Genome Project or in the race to clone a human being.

Embodying Ecological Heritage in a Maya Community: Health, Happiness, and Identity provides an ethnographic account of life in a rural farming village in southern Belize, focusing on the connections between traditional ecological practices and the health and wellness of the Maya community living there. It discusses how complex histories, ecologies, and development practices are negotiated by individuals of all ages, and the community at large, detailing how they interact with their changing environments. The study has wide applicability for indigenous communities fighting for rights to manage their lands across the globe, as well as for considering how health is connected to heritage practices in communities worldwide.

This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact.

Rethinking design through the lens of embodied cognition provides a novel way of understanding human interaction with technology. In this book, Christopher Baber uses embodied cognition as a lens through which to view both how designers engage in creative practices and how people use designed artifacts. This view of cognition as enactive, embedded, situated, or distributed, without recourse to internal representations, provides a theoretical grounding that makes possible a richer account of human interaction with technology. This understanding of everyday interactions with things in the world reveals opportunities for design to intervene. Moreover, Baber argues, design is an embodied activity in which the continual engagement between designers and their materials is at the heart of design practice. Baber proposes that design and creativity should be considered in dynamic, rather than discrete, terms and explores “task ecologies”—the concept of environment as it relates to embodied cognition. He uses a theory of affordance as an essential premise for design practice, arguing that affordances are neither form nor function but arise from the dynamics within the human-artifact-environment system. Baber explores agency and intent of smart devices and implications of tangible user interfaces and activity recognition for human-computer interaction. He proposes a systems view of human-artifact-environment interactions—to focus on any one component or pairing misses the subtleties of these interactions. The boundaries between components remain, but the borders that allow exchange of information and action are permeable, which gives rise to synergies and interactions.

This book explores embodiment in second language education, sociocultural theory and research. It focuses on process drama, an embodied approach that engages learners’ imagination, body and voice to create a felt-experience of the second language and culture. Divided into three parts, it begins by examining the aesthetic and intercultural dimension of performative language teaching, the elements of drama and knowing-in-action. The central part of the book examines issues related to play, emotions, classroom discourse and assessment when learning a language through process drama, in a sociocultural perspective. The third part is an analysis of the author’s qualitative research, which informs a subtle discussion on reflective practitioner methodology, learner engagement and teacher artistry. Each chapter includes a drama workshop, illustrating in practice what embodying language in action can look like when working with asylum seekers, adult learners with intellectual disabilities, pre-service teachers, international students and children involved in a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programme. A unique combination of theory, research and reflective practice, this book provides valuable insights for teacher/artists, teacher educators and researchers in the fields of performative and sociocultural language learning.