I´m born into a house with no computer

For the last assignment of the Softness of Things, under the theme of Transformation, I presented the project i have been developing for the Physical Computing class.

The idea of the project is to create a device that enriches the experience of visiting a museum at the same time that allows social interactions by connecting visitors with similar experiences.
When visiting a museum our emotions are constantly changing. We like some artworks that we see, we don’t like others and our body responds differently according to the stimulus received/given from an artwork.
What if we could map the emotional responses of our body in relation with what we are experiencing? Later on we can have access to that information and visualize how our emotions changed during the visit to the museum and see, for example, how our body reacted to a specific artwork that we really liked.
What if, having a device that captures our emotions and maps them, we could create a way of linking people that share similar experiences? By being linked (visually) both visitors have something in common and that could be a good starting point for a good conversation.

Now I'm just developing the first part of the project, where the device saves your emotional response when visiting a museum and allows you to see the visualization of your emotional response, transforming the values of the GSR into a visual representation.

Representation in real time - simulates what can happen. This part of the program in not visible to the visitor. Is the part of the program that is receiving the data from the GSR and the data ( event based) when an artwork is tagged.

The aesthetics of visualization are not completed and I was experimenting a more organic organization of the viz, since we were visualizing the emotional response of
the body. This is an example of that viz where the size of the circles represented the value of the response.

This is the result visualization through time where we can see the graph of our emotional response an when we were "supposedly" seeing a specific artwork. Also allows to see the graph of others visitors.

Another important step of this project was the design and building of the device. I used neoprene as a material because I needed something resistance and elastic. Here is some pictures of the process:

Please see the project website for more information.
(since is not update it please download Posted by qwertyfun on December 13, 2007 10:07 AM | Permalink