(Im)Paired Bodies: design as co-domestication. The case of wearables

International audienceThe emergence of " smart " devices close to bodies and fueled by personal data (smartwatches, smartphones, smartglasses, smart fabrics...), questions our definitions of agency, sociability and embodiment. How do you design objects acutely aware of what one's body is, with respect and care for one's agency, while enabling a continuous evolution of the self? What may design enable to contemporary embodiments? How could we design intimate sociable objects? And last but not least, why are we investigating these potentialities? We will first introduce the historic and philosophical roots of wearables, before presenting short case studies of a series of smartwatches and highlighting their common points: rhetorics of health, productivity and control. We will then propose a framework for their analysis, and present the major issues of their design process, building upon our current experiment. To conclude, we will discuss the definition of paired technologies