The Enactive Walkway is a reactive installation that examines the intersection of cognition, embodiment and human experience. Designed for public spaces, the project explores the concept of Enaction as a new paradigm of interface design-one that emphasizes dynamic coupling between the environment and user. A 2×6-feet structure runs the length of a hallway and is embedded with illuminated transparent tile boxes that tilt on the vertical axis when stepped on. The tile boxes contain various materials such as water, marbles, broken glass and nails. The actuation of tiles sets in motion the materials contained within, producing flickering multicolored light, and sound that is collected, processed and played back into the space. The shifting ground of the Enactive Walkway destabilizes the body, encouraging participants to become more aware of their own movements and interactions. Together these elements creates a playful, disorienting experience that poses the place of embodied knowledge in interaction design.

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The Enactive Walkway is an exploration of embodied knowledge through the burgeoning arena labeled enaction. It is a reactive installation piece intended for public space that aims to investigate how the intuitive knowledge of perceptually guided motor skills can be incorporated in interaction design. A 2×6-feet structure runs the length of a hallway and is embedded with illuminated transparent tile boxes that tilt on the vertical axis when stepped on. The tiles contain various materials such as water, marbles, broken glass and nails. The actuation of transparent tiles sets in motion the materials contained within, producing flickering multicolored light that illuminates the tiles, and sound that is collected, processed and played back into the space. Above the Walkway hangs a 2×6-feet print on lenticular lenses that shifts between images of water and broken glass as one walks underneath and watches. Together these elements creates a playful, disorienting, experience that poses the place of embodied knowledge in interaction design.

The theoretical grounding for the project comes from Enactive cognitive science, as proposed by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch in their 1991 book The Embodied Mind. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines cognitive science, philosophy, computer science, the Walkway is also informed by the objective of the ENACTIVE Network of Excellence, which aims to explore “interaction paradigms that could substitute and integrate interaction with information mediated by symbolic/iconic systems (language/images) with media based on Enactive Knowledge”(http://vrlab.epfl.ch/Projects/enactive.html). Enactive ways of knowing stand in opposition with the symbolic and iconic modes that dictate the current paradigm of interaction. Instead, Enactive knowledge is knowledge gained through perceptually guided action; through motor responses and motor skills. It is the mode of interaction intuitively used when manipulating an object, riding a bicycle or performing a martial art.

The Enactive Walkway rests on active, embodied engagement with a haptic interface situated within a public space. Through the loop of perception-action-interaction the installation excites the visual, auditory and tactile senses simultaneously. The shifting ground of the Enactive Walkway thus destabilizes the body, encouraging participants to become more aware of their own movements and the interactions of their perceptions within the public realm. Participants do not simply interact with a pre given environment but rather enact it. By offering a new paradigm of interaction the Enactive Walkway emphasizes the importance of embodied knowledge in interface design.