Discussion Output


Revised domains:
#Human biosignal
#Collective creating
#Haptics interface

Description of revised domains:
My domains were #collective creating, #human biosignal, and #human-space interaction. Now I think it is better for me to switch my domains into #collective creating, #human biosignal, and #haptic interface. It is because after a brief research I found haptic interface would be a good medium for biosignal external display.

Group discussion:
In the discussion, we agreed that domains are the media that we would attach to realize all kind of ideas and concepts. As for how to conceive concepts, it is not to extract concepts from domains, but drag concepts into the framework of domains. For instance, given that the domains could be #human natural behavior, #plant natural behavior, and #plant-robot interaction, the concept could be how to solve the problem that the emotional distance of people are becoming longer and in this case, using a plant as a medium to enhance the connection between people would be a good form, which is in the field of the domains.

We think that new social problems aroused from the universal application of new technologies are good design topics.

We talked about whether human mind would be interfered or controlled by others and whether humans have a real individual will (decision). What is the boundary between self and group and individual will and collective will?


Supplement of statement of Intent:
New ideas come to me that whether biosignals of different individuals could actually interfere with each other. Can I create something by collect human biosignals or human bio-attributes by setting up an antenna-like device in public space? By interfering with the electromagnetic field emitted by the antenna, people can perceive the effects of biological signals of themselves or others on environmental electromagnetic fields and the can do something through cooperation among strangers. Another idea is about a personal biosignals amplifier design, which can generate a cross-sensory display of biosignals and distribute the signals to the ambient environment.

The preliminary concept is about galvanic skin response (GSR). It is a new method for measuring and quantitatively analyzing user experience in HCD field. Electrodermal activity (EDA) measures the activity of the eccrine sweat glands and is said to be a linear correlate to arousal (Dawson, M. E. (2007), 'The Electrodermal System' in Cacioppo, J. T.; Tassinary, L. G. & Berntson, G., ed. (2007), Handbook of Psychophysiology, Cambridge University Press.) Given that visual images can evoke different galvanic skin response effects, and different people would have different galvanic skin response effects towards the same visual images. I want to use images and environment lighting which could keep changing as visual stimuli for participators, using wearable devices or an installation to detect their GSR signals. Different GSR pattern can trigger different visual/musical/lighting (or others) effects and the in this way, both visual stimuli and participators participate in a collective creating process.

I got inspiration from the Practices of Looking, Introduction to Visual Culture (Sturken & Cartwright, 2009). The meaning of an image is not fixed. It is the collective effect of the works, the viewers, the environment and the contexts.

The second concept is about how to get biosignals of two groups of people remotely, which can be tangible to both of them and collectively create something which can be preserved to be a timeline of creating. It is trying to solve the disconnection and potential bias between different isolated (geographically and mentally) groups.

The third concept gets inspiration from the Tools for Thought written by Howard Rheingold. A problem came to me that, computer design starts from mimic human thinking, calculating and now is trying to make computer perceive things and study like humans. In short, the tendency of computer development is to make a computer like humans. But what why not make humans like the computer or make human and computer a symbiotic object? Perhaps combine the merits of humans and computers, for example, use human eyes, human visual nerves, and cerebral cortex as the receptor and the embedded computation parts in a human body can enhance their calculating ability, memory, and interpersonal or human-computer information distribution ability? Human inner signals have the great potential, which could be comparable with the electric signals in the computer, like the positive and negative feedback loops, high efficient hormone, sensitive bioelectric signal, and so on. The human body is a natural super translator. The signals in nerves, to me, is similar to the boolean logic operation of computer put forward by Turing. Nerves perhaps can be understood as the reduced version of underwater optical cables. And such signals represent the abstract and sensory information captured by human parts like eyes and skin, and could be understood by computations. If there is a kind of chemical reagent like contrast media for the medical purpose, can track the inner movements (nerve actions), with the detection technique like X-ray, can reveal the inner movements.