Embodiment 2: about body

Remember that Chien-Ming Wang had the worst earned run averages in career at the 09 MLB seasons before being put to disabled list. When a reporter asked for the coach and he said “Don’t worry! Wang is fine, just the problem of mechanics.” I think it’s a good initiation to contemplate the bodied condition called the ‘mechanics’.

As the ball game get start, what we find the most important to players is that how does he do? Or how does he feel in today? This includes not only his ability, but also personal percepation. All these factors are so naturally connected each other and everybody never ignores them.

Not surprisingly, that Hummel and Overbeeke[1] embodied research explored human perceptual-motor and emotional skills to improve tangible product. They were inspired by parts of theory of Gibson’s ecological psychology and Norman’s physical psychology, even they have a little argument for “Affordance.”

As point out by them, affordance couldn’t separate it from acting that everyday engagement with the world directed toward the accomplishment of practical task[2]. Furthermore, Overbeeke strongly convince that meaning is in (inter)action[1]. In other words, meaning is build by user and manifested in the end through performance. Therefore, an affordance can be easily seen as a tool and process.

So much for the detailed argument; I will now again use a clear narration of ecological psychology studies by Paul Dourish[2] epitomizing . Said: “ ’Knowledge in the world’ rather than ‘Knowledge in the head.’ ”


[1] Overbeeke, C.J., the aesthetics of the impossible. Retrieved 26 October 2007 from Technische Universiteit Eindhoven: http://www.tue.nl/bib/
[2] Dourish, P. Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.