SOMA: In Search of Somatic Intelligence

Abstract

SOMA is a multisensory robotic sculpture that engages bodily memory as a mode of human–AI communication. Visitors re-enact a remembered movement through a wearable sensing device, while the machine listens, interprets, and responds through its own mechanical choreography, forming an intimate, non-verbal dialogue between human and robotic body. At a time when human–AI interaction is dominated by text-based conversational agents, the work reclaims the body as a site of communication with artificial being, positioning somatic memory as both metaphor and method.