Friction in Processual Ethics: Reconfiguring Ethical Relations in Interdisciplinary Research

Garrett, Rachael; Brundell, Patrick; Castle-Green, Simon; Hawkins, Kat; Tennent, Paul; Zhou, Feng; Lampinen, Airi; Höök, Kristina; Benford, Steve

Abstract

Friction – disagreement and breakdown – is an omnipresent aspect of conducting interdisciplinary research yet is rarely presented in formal research reporting. We analyse a performance-led research process where professional dancers with different disabilities explored how to improvise with an industrial robot, with the support of an interdisciplinary team of human-computer and human-robot interaction researchers. We focus on one site of friction in our research process; how to dance – safely – with robots? By presenting our research process, we exemplify the different ways in which we encountered this friction and how we reconfigured the research process around it. We contribute five ways in which we arrived at a generative ethical outcome, which may be helpful in productively engaging with friction in interdisciplinary collaboration.

Citation

Garrett, R., Brundell, P., Castle-Green, S., Hawkins, K., Tennent, P., Zhou, F., Lampinen, A., Höök, K., & Benford, S. (2025, April). Friction in Processual Ethics: Reconfiguring Ethical Relations in Interdisciplinary Research. Presented at CHI 2025: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Yokohama, Japan

• Presentation Conference Type: Edited Proceedings
• Conference Name: CHI 2025: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• Start Date: Apr 26, 2025
• End Date: May 1, 2025
• Acceptance Date: Apr 24, 2025
• Online Publication Date: Apr 25, 2025
• Publication Date: Apr 25, 2025
• Deposit Date: Jul 24, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 25, 2025
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Article Number: 400
• Book Title: CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• ISBN: 979-8-4007-1394-1
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3714123
• Keywords: ethics; processual ethics; felt ethics; research ethics; artist-led research; somabotics; robots; dance; disability; crip feminism; friction; misalignment
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/48209189
• Publisher URL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714123