The slow floor: towards an awareness of bodily movement through interactive walking surfaces

The aim of this research is to gain knowledge of the relationship between walking movements and sound responses, through pressure sensitive interactive surfaces, for awareness of this movement and felt experience. As design research through practice we are creating and refining the Slow Floor, a pressure sensitive surface mapped to rich interactive sound response. This design activity is supported by program of evaluative studies to gain knowledge of the movement to sound relationships and to feed this knowledge back into the design practice. This paper starts with an overview of design practice as research. It then presents the development of the Slow Floor as a demonstration of this practice by integrating creative and evaluative stages. We conclude with some initial insights into the movement relationships established by observing Butoh dancers walking on the Slow Floor. These findings also provide tentative validation of both the design and evaluative approach used within this research.