The Veldt

In this sci-fi story, the nursery room has its magic to bring people to different places by simulating the environment. Inspired by this idea, I designed an interactive installation that can mimic the tactile sensation by wearing special gloves. Inside the gloves, the tactile simulation module of the glove can shift into any grain of a particular subject. The gloves are used as an accessory for the nursery room in the sci-fi story. When the simulated object appeared, the gloves starts working with the room. They make connections by a specific frequency radio. The room has infrared sensors to detect the infrared signal from the transmitter on the gloves. The room uses infrared information to compute the location of the gloves. When the user touched the simulated object in the room(the object and the gloves have the same location), the gloves start simulating the tactile of that object.

Here is the sketch of the gloves.

The problem caused by the glove also exists. For instance, the comfort and flexibility of the user are not considered. Transmitting the real-time information of the tactile may need an extremely high bandwidth of the radio. The power source of the gloves is not well-designed. This kind of machine is under research.

 

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

After reading this fiction story, I was trapped in a moral and ethical issue: How can we value the happiness of different people? Should we sacrifice our happiness to make other people happy? Inspired by this, I designed an interactive art installation called pain shared machine. The machine is a big capsule that contains an odor generator in it.  The cover of the capsule is a two-way mirror. The outside and see through it while the people inside the cover can only see the screen installed on it. The display and the odor generator are connected to a remote sensor that can capture the real-time situation of that poor child. The screen will display the environment around that child. The odor generator will generate the real-time smell around the child. There’s a control station in the capsule that can stop the capsule. On the screen of the control station, the live simulation of the child is on display. The installation is aimed at reminding people that their lawless, amoral life is established on such a painful life.

Here is the sketch:

The installation has several problems. Firstly is that only a few people will use it since the experience in the machine is terrible and grueling. Then the machine is a big challenge to the people’s lifestyle there. Is nearly impossible to let the people there give up their amoral life and shift to a normal life to save a little child.

 

The Plague

The fiction story contains love and moral element in the background of a petrifaction plague. Inspired by the notion of fiction, I designed an interactive input device for those petrified people. The device has two mirrors. On the top of the bigger mirror, it has a laser transmitter. It also has a laser sensor to detect the laser signal on the bottom of the mirror. The two mirrors can extend the optical path. In this case, this device can enlarge the 1nm movement to 1mm or larger. The enlarged signal can be recognized and let the petrified people be able to type and communicate with others.

Here’s the sketch

 

The problem with the device is that it will cause a lot of Human, material, and financial resources since the whole society need to treat the petrified people as humans. Also if the petrified people’s minds can not treat the type of task, the device will become useless.