Awards – INTIMAL: Interfaces for Relational Listening

INTIMAL App©

INTIMAL App© is a mobile phone application developed by Ximena Alarcón that invites people to listen to their “migratory journeys”, by walking in their surroundings, to sense place and sense presence, alone and with others across distant locations.

The app senses users’ walking rhythms to be sonified and perceived as breathing. When used collectively, people can hear each others’ walking patterns as “breathing”, feeling embodied emotional telepresence. Within the journey the app reveals excerpts of stories of migration, that might trigger a response from the user, building the path with words and memories, as relations emerge and connect in an exercise of shared memories.

This current artistic and technical implementation was funded by The Studio Recovery Fund, awarded by The Studio, Bath Spa University’s Enterprise and Innovation Hub. This fund helped to ‘unlock’ the possibilities of the App by developing a service for the INTIMAL app and test its usability, within the context of the pandemic lockdown. The service aims to create local and distant connections by sensing rhythms, opening new paths and insights in people’s daily limited walks during and after the pandemic lockdown, and ‘unlock’ contemporary stories of local places, triggered by voices of Colombian migrant women from the INTIMAL Collective. This work was tested and implemented in collaboration with Service Designer Dr Liliana Rodríguez, and programmer Kieran Harte.

Awards, Collaborations, Interfaces, Phase 2

INTIMAL App© Showcase at The Studio, May 25th

INTIMAL App©, by Ximena Alarcón, 2021. All Rights Reserved.

As a result of the UNLOCK project, awarded to Ximena Alarcón by The Studio Recovery Fund, and in collaboration with Liliana Rodríguez and Kieran Harte, we will showcase the results of testing and developing further the INTIMAL App©.

We will demonstrate how we have developed the INTIMAL App© to allow the user to connect with others through their walking and breathing patterns as they listen to stories collected from Colombian migrant women living in Europe. Other five projects funded by The Studio Recovery Fund, will be part of this showcase on 25th of May, 11am – 3pm.

Here you can read the program.

Here you can book your free ticket for the event.

The Studio, Bath Spa University’s Enterprise and Innovation Hub

All welcome!

Intimal App© is a mobile phone application developed by Ximena Alarcón that invites people to listen to their “migratory journeys”, by walking in their surroundings, to sense place and sense presence, alone and with others across distant locations.

The app senses users’ walking rhythms to be sonified and perceived as breathing. When used collectively, people can hear each others’ walking patterns as “breathing”, feeling embodied emotional telepresence. Within the journey the app reveals excerpts of stories of migration, that might trigger a response from the user, building the path with words and memories, as relations emerge and connect in an exercise of shared memories.

Awards

Awarded: The Studio Recovery Fund

I am happy to announce that I have been awarded The Studio Recovery Fund , for the sub-project UNLOCK to develop a service for the INTIMAL App© (by Ximena Alarcón, 2021), and test its usability and unlock narrative options by women in Bath, within the context of the pandemic lockdown. The mobile app will take them on “migratory journeys”, helping them to explore a sense of place and a sense of presence, through their physical and emotional connections with local places, stimulating collective storytelling. The service explores alternatives to screen interfaces to feel embodied emotional telepresence. It aims to create local and distant connections by sensing rhythms, opening new paths and insights in people’s daily limited walks during and after the pandemic lockdown. I am very pleased to work on this project in collaboration with the Strategy and Service’s Designer Dr Liliana Rodríguez, and BSU’s Creative Computing programmer Kieran Harte, to test the app’s context, technological development and implementation, through a Co-design workshop with experts at The Studio, and with a User X workshop with nine women based in Bath.

The Studio Recovery Fund “aims to help freelancers, micro-businesses and third sector organisations in the BANES area”. Six projects were selected over 30 businesses applications for creative technology projects that aim to promote renewal and support the region’s post-pandemic recovery efforts. This is an exciting opportunity for me to test the concepts of the INTIMAL project and expand these in the local space, and across distance locations and proximities. I look forward to listen to the stories that the project helps to emerge.

As a resident at The Studio I have been exploring how to make accessible different aspects of the INTIMAL system, developed between 2017-2019. In 2020 I started as a Resident, and received support from Bath Spa University and the Graduate Internships program, to work in a prototype of the app with the support of the programmer Ricardo Graça. With The Studio Recovery Fund Award, the app goes further, exploring collaborations, and testing it with local users.

Academic-Dissemination, Awards, Conferences

Pamela Z Award: Honorary Mention

I feel honoured for being awarded with an honorary mention of the NIME 2019’s Pamela Z Award for Innovation, for the paper “INTIMAL: Walking to Find Place, Breathing to Feel Presence” who I wrote together with my co-authors Victor Evaristo González Sánchez and Çagri Erdem, and my artistic work involving migration issues, specifically for helping to “connect women’s voices who are unheard and have suffered from migrating to other countries involuntarily”. In this logic, I thank collaborators such as Mujer Diáspora (Diaspora Women), and her coordinator Helga Flamtermesky, who have collected and provided me with such voices, which have been heard by the INTIMAL community of Colombian Women, as a catharsis, an exercise of collective memory. Also to the INTIMAL community, who has followed me in the work to listen to these voices, and to their own migrations, and to my research assistant Lucia Nikolaia Lopez Bojorquez who supported me in the intense emotional work of annotating technically these voices to be heard by others, in the INTIMAL project.

I received a gift kindly provided by Margaret Schedel: a copy of the book “Artful Design” by Ge Wang.

Pamela Z award in the NIME Conference, was created last year and recognizes a person who is doing significant work that improves the discussion about diversity in NIME either through their research connecting people or through actions such as organisation and awareness.

This year the awardee of the Pamela Z main award is precisely the composer Margaret Schedel, who has contributed to the inclusion of diversity and NIMEs (New Interfaces for Musical Expression), and her co-authored paper “Women’s Labor: Creating NIMEs from Domestic Tools”.

Thanks to the jury of Pamela Z Award 2019:

Isabel Nogueira, Astrid Bin, Anna Weisling, Ana Maria Romano Gomez, Anna Xambó