Alternate Reality Helmet

Group members: Alyanna, Mia, Mickey, Jordan, Eadin

 

This artifact exists in the context of Foddering Beijing, and the idea is: 

[A] type of helmet or goggle type of machine that is able to connect to your brain through via pulses, to stimulate the brain of perceiving and experiencing information that would allow the user to be in another virtual world while the body is in a state of slumber. It would be similar to be living in a dream. The reasoning behind this invention is that, in Folding Beijing people have such hard lives. Their lives are essentially controlled by the superiors and they are only allowed to stay awake for 8 hours a day. So with this people are live an alternate life with their created avatars.

– Team member Mickey

My perspectives: 

The way of interaction is mainly based on establishing the virtually reality. The helmet reads thoughts from users’ minds, process them and builds a nicer world accordingly. The health monitoring function is also a way to read, analyze and send feedback as an output. However the way of this interaction only involves users’ mind in general but not other physical movement, and its purpose focuses more on mental healing or entertainment. 

This artifact successfully reshapes one’s real life but in a more friendly way. It enables users to have a satisfied life and raise their subjective well-being while also monitoring body health. The scene setting can be determined by the user’s thinking. All these functions may acquire mature and sync VR and biological technologies. We took into health into consideration because one common phenomenon nowadays is diving into digital entertainment like video games without rest. 

One controversial point of this invention in my opinion, which was also raised after our performance, is about the meaning for its existence. Is it a kind of escape from reality? Is it a kind of addiction? In some sense, yes, but this is because people in third space have no ways to change their life. Maybe we can add on some extra functions such as time limit or change the way it shapes people’s mind. However I do think these questions are also challenging other technical inventions in the reality, especially with regard to entertainment, so a lot of profound thoughts are inspired here.

Process: 

Our group’s project started with an email from me to connect every member.

We have met 5 times in total (2 online) preparing for our projects.

For the first meeting we briefly shared everyone’s artifacts and their connection to the fiction context via zoom. Also we commented on each other’s work and picked some that we thought are really interesting and meaningful. After this meeting we started to think about how everyone’s most attracting artifact can be done by simple prototyping and performance. 

In the second meeting, we shared our opinions on how to realize the artifacts and performance andvoted. Most of us agreed that Mickey’s idea and probable script is the most suitable one. So we decided to perform —— A Helmet! 

 

Next, some of us went to the Cardboard  Prototyping Workshop on Tuesday and gained useful skills for prototyping. After the workshop my team members stayed in the studio to discuss the script and detailed design of the helmet, when I have to attend my ixlab class and couldn’t make it. Pity!

On Wednesday we started to build our helmet prop. We borrowed materials, measured the performer’s head, cut, scored and glued the cardboards… We run into many problems but anyway we made something finally. Andy helped us a lot during this period of time, thanks a lot! 

On Thursday we decorate and finished our helmet. Also we did the last check on the script and rehearsed the performance. 

 

A performance from another group:

There was one performance involving elevating furnitures at home(forget the exact name sorry). The host of the apartment has a smart controller and can operate furnitures at home so that life is easier and the room is more empty. This is amazing imagination but I don’t think it related to the fiction so so much as it can be put into any context. But it does involves active interactions between humans and machines. People can control furnitures to move and also there would be smart reminders from that system. 

I really admire those people as they did so well in prototyping. The controller can actually be swiped up and down; The mini model of home clearly showed the elevation of things. Since it’s almost impossible to build so many furnitures with real size and elevate them in the classroom, it’s smart of them to create a shrunk model and combine it to the action of the characters, so it’s a real-time performance with two views. At the very beginning one might be guessing what’s going on when there’s a little human model acting simultaneously with the actress, but the situation soon became clear. 

One confusion came up to my mind after watching this performance is why we need to carry a big physical controller all the time when we can insert it into phones or control by voice. This is similar with Andy’s question and can be better connected to the smart home design area. I have one suggestion here which is to add a sensor of existing things on the floor before the furnitures go down, because sometimes there might still be stuffs or even humans below and there would be a disaster if the furniture lands on other things. Another idea is to give more consideration on the speed of the elevation. If people need to grab something immediately, it would be annoying that the furnitures move so slowly. However more problems might occur if they move too fast. 

Anyway I still like this artifact as well as the performance very much!

 

Thanks for reading.

February 26, 2021