rlx:tech Digital Spa

Background Drawing on Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics and Kristina Hook’s soma design, this project explores the atmospheres around online browsing, asking audiences to make active connections between digital, corporeal and physical space. This differs to traditional UX design which typically minimises the body and surrounding atmosphere to produce flow states that extract the user’s attention for profit. N. Katherine Hayles’ work on nonconscious cognition can be used to understand that algorithms modulate digital materiality, and therefore atmospheric conditions, at a speed outside of our conscious range. This site offers the chance to participate in atmospheres modulated by human bodies in what I call ‘human real-time’, as opposed to ‘algorithmic real time’. The work is part of the show Conflict in My Outlook which investigates the way the Internet mediates and shapes social relations and ideas. Contribution rlx:tech Digital Spa is a practice-based research project considering somatic browsing atmospheres, culminating in a website that I made containing 4 browsing environments. These house 3 online rituals: a webform to write un-sendable messages and release them without consequence; a guided meditation activating the space between your body and your browser; and a self-soothing endless scroll with saveable pockets of affirmation. The site uses CSS, HTML and javascript; containing interactive backgrounds which highlight human trace on the materiality of the digital. The project has opened up new lines of enquiry: how can browsing atmospheres contribute to interior experiences, especially in times of mass-connected isolation? Drawing from Sarah Pink + Shanti Sumartojo, how could we ‘think atmospherically’ when designing online interactions? Significance This project is a new work commission from the University of QLD Art Museum for ‘Conflict In My Outlook Part 1: We Met Online’, curated by Anna Briers, and features work from 11 international artists.