Making Energy Matter : Soma Design for Ethical Relations in Energy Systems

Abstract: This paper outlines a first-person engagement with energy systems and materiality and shows how somaesthetic design is one possible means by which we can cultivate and design for new ways of ethical being in relation to energy systems. The climate crisis does not afford a continued pace of our current technological design and development. There is a need to reframe our relationship to energy, particularly in a Western energy context, like Sweden, where we have plentiful access and no meaningful barriers to thoughtless use. Sustainable Interaction Design (SID) has attempted but fallen short of bringing forth meaningful interventions. This project argues that facilitating a new way of being in relation to energy will help us open an unexamined design space. Soma design is about designing ways of being in the world, but soma design as a method uses how we are in the world to find designerly ways of contributing to a transformational becoming. Through a deep engagement on the individual level, I did design work around energy system relations. Autobiographical design work revealed a trajectory of fatalism and extreme restriction to a slow loosening up – an opening into a more holistic relationship with energy. As the process unfolded, it became clear that sustainability is not a somaesthetic sensibility but that it can be appealed to via soma design methodology which reveals underlying notions and values that benefit sustainability. This contributed to a new understanding of how we relate to energy somatically and how we might tap into relational ethics in interaction design research and practice to encourage a felt sense for the materiality of energy.