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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.12533 |
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| _version_ | 1866914508648218624 |
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| author | Hu, Botao 'Amber' Huang, Danlin |
| author_facet | Hu, Botao 'Amber' Huang, Danlin |
| contents | The recent more-than-human turn in design calls for attentiveness to nonhuman beings. Yet -- as Thomas Nagel's famous ``What is it like to be a bat?'' thought experiment highlights -- human experience is constrained by our own sensorium and an irreducible gap in phenomenal access to nonhuman \emph{Umwelten}. Grounded in eco-phenomenology and eco-somatics, this paper proposes \textbf{Experiencing the More-than-Human through Human Augmentation} (MtHtHA, or ``>HtH+''), a design approach that repurposes human augmentation technologies -- typically aimed at enhancing human capabilities for human optimization -- to create temporary, embodied, first-person experiences that modulate the human sensorium to approximate nonhuman sensory experiences, cultivating ecological awareness, empathy, and care across species boundaries. We articulate seven design principles, report five design cases -- EchoVision (bat-like echolocation), FeltSight (star-nosed-mole tactile navigation), FungiSync (fungal network attunement), TentacUs (octopus-like distributed agency), and City of Sparkles (urban data from an AI's perspective) -- and discuss implications for more-than-human aesthetics and design practice. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_12533 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Experiencing the More-than-Human Through Human Augmentation Hu, Botao 'Amber' Huang, Danlin Human-Computer Interaction The recent more-than-human turn in design calls for attentiveness to nonhuman beings. Yet -- as Thomas Nagel's famous ``What is it like to be a bat?'' thought experiment highlights -- human experience is constrained by our own sensorium and an irreducible gap in phenomenal access to nonhuman \emph{Umwelten}. Grounded in eco-phenomenology and eco-somatics, this paper proposes \textbf{Experiencing the More-than-Human through Human Augmentation} (MtHtHA, or ``>HtH+''), a design approach that repurposes human augmentation technologies -- typically aimed at enhancing human capabilities for human optimization -- to create temporary, embodied, first-person experiences that modulate the human sensorium to approximate nonhuman sensory experiences, cultivating ecological awareness, empathy, and care across species boundaries. We articulate seven design principles, report five design cases -- EchoVision (bat-like echolocation), FeltSight (star-nosed-mole tactile navigation), FungiSync (fungal network attunement), TentacUs (octopus-like distributed agency), and City of Sparkles (urban data from an AI's perspective) -- and discuss implications for more-than-human aesthetics and design practice. |
| title | Experiencing the More-than-Human Through Human Augmentation |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.12533 |