Designing an Application to Encourage Appreciation of Body’s ‘Hyoh-Joh’ in Movement: Supporting Embodied Knowledge Learning from Phenomenological View

Abstract

Athletes and dancers, as practitioners of bodily movement, are particularly engaged in the learning of embodied knowledge, which is a flow aiming at somatic meaning-making. In the learning of embodied knowledge, 'intentionality’ such as perception and thought play an important role; however, in visual intentionality, especially, there tends to be a lack of 'soma'. To activate visual intentionality 'through and with the soma’, the author hypothesizes that it is beneficial to attempt to see the ‘Hyoh-Joh’ of the body in movement. ‘Hyoh-Joh’, as a phenomenological concept, corresponds to Ausdruck in German and Expression in English, and refers to a living Gestalt that embodies ‘emotional values’ and ‘action affordance values’ in material things. a In this study, we are designing an application that encourages the appreciation of the ‘Hyoh-Joh’ of the moving body for practitioners of body movement. This app features 'moving figures' drawn in three-dimensional space on the screen, with each joint point of body movement as a vertex. Users can 'edit and appreciate' these figures artistically on their own. Moreover, they can introspect and describe their appreciation experience, name the created figures as a ‘Hyoh-Joh’ in their own way, and save them in a database along with the figures. This specification aims to encourage practitioners to perceive ‘Hyoh-Joh’ of body and support the learning of embodied knowledge. Through the designing and practicing with this app, this study explores ‘Hyoh-Joh’ of body in movement, a crucial aspect of emobodied knowledge.

Keywords: Embodied Knowledge Learning, Hyoh-Joh, Gestalt, Phenomenology, Somaesthetics, Design

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1004692