Media Lab
Europe
Human
Connectedness research group
Aura
an intimate remote awareness system based on sleep
patterns
Aoife Ní Mhóráin, Dipak Patel, Stefan Agamanolis
Aura is a prototype background communication device that aims to
create a sense of emotional presence between two people who are
separated by space or time. An augmented sleeping mask records
sleeping rhythms and infers an emotional state of the wearer. This
information is transmitted to a remote location and mapped to musical
selections in a personal keepsake "music box" that represents the
remote partner.
One of the most delicate forms of connection between close partners is
rooted in a sense of awareness of each other's emotional state. For
example, one partner can often tell if the other is feeling down by
interpreting, sometimes unconsciously, a variety of subtle signals to
which they have been attuned over a period of time, like body
movement, facial expression, voice quality, and so on. Physical or
temporal separation, consequently, can impede partners from
maintaining this kind of intuitive awareness.
Aura investigates the possibility of reinstating this subtle awareness
regardless of separation. Rather than just a cognitive awareness of
someone else's state, Aura aims to convey emotional information in a
visceral way, similar to what is sensed when one has a "gut feeling"
about something.
Aura consists of a sleeping mask with an embedded electro-oculargram
that can detect eye movements typical of REM sleep. Data from the
mask is used to grossly estimate whether or not the wearer has had a
good night's sleep, which is in turn used to infer if he/she is in a
good or bad mood the following day. This information is transmitted
to the remote location and mapped to music compositions or selections
that play inside a precious box recalling a jewelry or music box. By
opening the box the remote partner can listen to music that was
composed from their loved one's previous night of sleep.
Music was chosen as a medium because we felt it was something that
could evoke the visceral quality of the emotions inferred from the
captured data. Conceptually, Aura aims to enable the user to not only
listen to but also feel their distant loved one's emotional
state. The project has highlighted a number of difficulties in
designing remote awareness systems, especially those that use
physiological measurements as a basis for capturing emotion.
Ultimately we feel that a greater understanding of the mechanisms of
human emotion is required to produce communication devices capable of
abstracting and reconstructing emotional information effectively.
Publications and Links
Joëlle Bitton and Aoife Ní Mhóráin, Human
Connectedness, Atopia Journal, issue 4.33, Atopia Projects,
2005, pp. 87 - 92. (link)
Aoife's personal web
site.
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