Virus as Quasi-Living Bio-Material for Interaction Design: Practical, Ethical, and Philosophical Implications
Raphael Kim · 2021
The interaction design research community continues to benefit from material-focused approaches, and from the diversity of materials under investigation. One category of such material is bio-materials of microbial origin, such as bacteria, mycelium, moulds, and Euglena. However, despite the increasing momentum towards bio-material based research, one type that is yet to be investigated in HCI, is viruses; an infectious, sub-microscopic, quasi-living, computational bio-agent. This paper initiates exploration of Human-Virus Interaction (HVI), through a material lens. This was achieved first by generating a literature-based material profile sketch of viruses, highlighting some of their distinct and/or unique material properties, characteristics, composition, and meaning. The components of the profile were then used as anchor points, to unpack the practical, ethical, and philosophical implications that are associated with viruses, and those that could be considered by researchers to help in their preparation of working with viruses in interaction design.