Designing Posthuman Data: Mapping Relations Between Bodies, Land and Data
Heidi R. Biggs · Designing Interactive Systems Conference · 2023
The posthuman turn is an emerging trend in HCI which builds on situated, multi-agent, horizontal, and entangled theories of interactions between people and technologies and people and non-human others like animals, trash, and bacteria (to name a few). My work adds to recent trends in sustainable HCI (SHCI) which uses posthuman theories to understand and intervene in The Anthropocene Era and impacts of climate change. In my dissertation research, I explore posthuman framings of environmental sustainability HCI by asking how data mediates relations between bodies and land using cases and embodied orientations which push the posthuman agenda to intersect with social justice. Through explorations of situated bodies in place, I ask how data practices bring people into relationship with land in more or less sustainable ways. I use race and queerness as critical embodied orientations to land and water histories which interrogate climate changed futures in the Midwestern United States.