Two interesting projects from the ITP (thanks regine!): On one hand, MoPres: Sense and contribute to the ghosty presences around you by Jane Oh, Alex Bisceglie (see also their website):
MoPres brings out the risidual presence of the people who occupied your current location. It is a geotagging project with the humanized 'context' of the locations. The raw data is from bio-metric sensers rather than the conscious, forceful, and mostly inaccurate logging which will provide a more creative and sophisticated flexibility of interpretation on the experiences of people
User Scenario: People wear the vest with embedded sensor package [heart rate and body temperature sensors], and the data is logged through the cell phone with geo tagging [gps and/or cell-tower id]. Once the mobile application reads the pattern of the data in relation to locations, it triggers the output devices embedded in the vest [heater and the pulse motor] with relevant residual patterns so that people can experience others' past experiences at the given spot.
On the other hand: the personal range finder: A device used to navigate physical space without the aid of your eyes by Justin Downs:
The personal range finder is an assistive device that translates physical space into a tactile input on your arm. The goal of this project was to make an affordable mobile machine that is rugged, runs off a common power supply (9volt battery) and easy to use. The range finder utilizes sonar to create a map of the surrounding physical space. This map is then translated to a scaled pressure gradient which is applied to your forearm. In this way you are able to “see” the surrounding 8 feet of space allowing for informed movement without the use of your eyes.
Why do I blog this? the first project is very interesting in the sense that it follows the trend "making explicit invisible/implicit phenomenon" in a nice way. Plus, I also like the lowtech look of the hooded :) The second one is different for another reason: the translation from physical space to a tactile input is a pertinent way to create a sort of intangible interaction through gestures: seeing by gesturing.