Performing Technology: A Five Year Long Autoetnography

This paper presents a longitudinal autoethnography of developing performance practice with a movement-based digital instrument. This instrument extends the human body and enables performers to express musical aesthetics through their movement. What started as a design practice and understanding the boundaries of performer roles, primarily between musicians and dancers, has resulted in extended periods of personal practice over five years. Through this performance-led autoethnography, I investigate how long-term engagement with technology supports the evolution of bodily sensitivities, enhances attunement to the performance ecology, and informs design transformations. Based on a reflexive thematic analysis of field notes, documentation materials (i.e., audio, video recordings, compositions, and scores), and journal entries, maintaining a creative practice through self-reflexivity revealed intimate connections with the researcher’s own body, as well as with other performing bodies beyond technology. This autoethnography contributes to HCI by demonstrating how embracing nonlinear processes, temporal dissonances, and aesthetic misalignments can cultivate design transformations.