Recently, Creative Learning Lab of Waag published a collection of papers on 'Embodiment' for the COMMIT/ Play embodied learning projects we carried out in the last years. Several authors share their vision on the subject in six articles. From the introduction by Karien Vermeulen we quote:
Nowadays it seems we are all about the head, mind and eyes: our world is dominated by screens and in education, children are requested to sit still behind their desk and are constantly asked to use their heads - without being able to move and use their body.
But as cognitive science has discovered compelling evidence that nearly all of our experiences - everything we do and learn - are in some way grounded in the body, you could ask if that is the way to go. We know that we perform better when we are comfortable in our skin. We know that we feel better when we connect to and understand our body. So why do we neglect this body of ours so often in our work, our learning processes and in the technological applications that are being developed? And, what can we do to make a change?
The British medical doctor, neuroscientist and engineer Daniel Wolpert even takes it as far as to state that the real reason we even have a brain is to produce adaptable and complex movements. Not to think or to perceive the world, no: to move. According to Wolpert, moving is the only way to actually affect the world around you.
Such observations triggered Waag a few years ago to focus more on the body in our development of technological applications in general and in our Creative Learning Lab programme more specifically. Rapid technological developments in low cost sensor and biofeedback technology facilitate our research.
