The IMPACT-project focused on designing a toolkit for experimenting with what we call somaesthetic experiences with mobile devices. The notion of somaesthetic experiences provides a holistic framework for bodily experiences that integrates soma (body), emotion, and aesthetics. The toolkit includes wireless sensors and actuators connected to mobile phones and attached to our bodies. Bin (Tina) Zhu together with Jordi Solsona and Pedro Ferreira, experimented with various kinds of expressions that end-users might be interested in conveying. The idea is to explore earlier ideas about a general communication mechanism that allows end-users to “talk” through a magic box with sensors and actuators, either connected to users’ mobiles, or located somewhere else.

We designed a massage test, to explore how people convey their haptic experience of massage to remote friends. The understanding gained from this study is now being put to use in designing the IMPACT toolkit for communication between people on a somaeshtetic level. We also held brainstorming workshops together with the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) in January and March at which we sought to better understand the experience of different materials in combination with digital interactions. We tested combining different vibrating devices together with different materials, and placing them on different parts of our bodies in order to sensitise ourselves to such experiences. In the future, we will use IMPACT to try out forms of expression and bodily communication in different context and domains.