Co-creative expression interface: Aiming to support embodied communication for developmentally disabled children

Abstract

This study is aiming to develop embodied interfaces to support co-creative expression which will be necessary when embracing the diversity in different people in a series of workshops, which are mainly focused on hand contact improvisation, held in the affected areas of the Great East Japan Earthquake. In specifics, two types of interfaces, which allow children to elicit hand-contact-improvisational expressions, create a relationship and cultivate it further, have been built with a focus on workshop-experienced autistic children having difficulties in verbal interactions in mind. These interfaces, designed to facilitate the reciprocal embodied awareness and thus achieve “the encounter and the connection with others through expression,” play a role of an inclusive function in hand contact improvisation. In the attempts of hand contact improvisations using these interfaces with the autistic children, it has been observed that co-creative expressions have been achieved among those children who tend to avoid a face-to-face contact. This indicates that the interfaces are efficient as new non-verbal technologies to support their communication.