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The goal of this project is to build a set of artifacts for an interactive and collaborative installation that mimics aspects of human somatosensation. By this way a fundamental form of bodily experience is brought into an interactive system. We believe that by shifting the focus of HCI away from a predominantly visual towards a cross-modal somatosensory interaction the acceptance, intuition and affordance of interfaces is fundamentally improved. In addition, such interfaces can be operated by people with impaired sensory system.
So far a set of three wireless interface-prototypes has been built. Each interface possesses a surface that is sensitive to pressure, vibration, and temperature. Users interact with the sculptures by touching and carrying them around. Tracking and sensor information is distributed to several different computers that transform user interaction into visuals and acoustics, creating a collaborative synesthetic experience. Four different multimedia environments have been developed and presented to the public. These environments allow us to explore the potential application of the interfaces in a variety of different contexts such as scientific education, shopping aid for visually impaired people, personal information device in an living office, and extended body part in dance performances.
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