Danielle Wilde has devised this simple, yet fabulous wearable interface, the hipDisk. I met Danielle at OZCHI2008 in Cairns. The hipDisk consists of two disks that you wear above and below your waist. An array of soft switches is positioned on the perimeter of each disk. A sound is generated when two switches touch. The disks exaggerate and make visible the changing relationships between the torso and the hip in motion. Cap it off with an Esther Williams-style bathers and swimming cap, multiply the number of performers, and you get this wacky musical ensemble playing The Girl from Ipanema.

http://www.daniellewilde.com/iWeb/daniellewilde/hipdisk.html

I’ve been doing some homework with Somaya on working with Nintendo Wii controllers – lots of great inspiration on the web.

This video from Tom Tlalim and Paola Tognazzi shows a nice wearable design that uses clip on (or velco) neoprene bands that allow the participant to wear up to six (or more) wii controllers.

W_space: the fully wearable Wiimote audio controller. Photo Courtesy Tom Tlalim

W_space: On the Wall: The Wiimotes and Nunchuk attachments fit into elastic sleeves. Photo courtesy of Tom Tlalim

Its interesting to look at the quality of the movement in this video. Seems to me there is common set of movement patterns that people engage in in this type of movement-based interactive sound design.

This reminds me that I’d very much like to do a video-based survey of what movements should/could correlate to different types of electronic sound – a reverse engineering research approach – to survey categories of movement as they relate to peoples experience of sound – I suspect its not as individual as we might assume. At the very least, it will make for some very cute interpretive dance video!

George and I are currently invited respondents to an online discussion on curating art that “responds to bodily inputs” on the CRUMB list. There’s lots of interesting discussion on there that relates to Thinking Through the Body. I haven’t posted anything yet (mainly because my body has been very reluctant to do any thinking at all – or go near a computer for a month now). But I plan to post something about this project in the next week or so. Several of you may also want to contribute. You can join the list and see an archive of the discussion so far at the website: http://www.crumbweb.org/

In the meantime – here’s a taster of one exchange within the discussion between Adinda van ‘t Klooster (the convener of the discussion) and Brigitta Zics. They’re talking about the difference between active and passive interaction. I’d be interested to hear what the Feldenkrais pros think of the idea of “cognitive feedback art”

——————————————–
ADINDA:
I think this is a very useful distinction[ACTIVE AND PASSIVE INTERACTION.]
If I understand this right, you refer to the body’s subconscious
physiological response which is reflected in their heartrate, EEG, EMG, etc,
captured by the system. As these are then reflected in audiovisual content
created by the artist or designer of the interactive system, the viewer is
challenged to gain more control over these otherwise immediate responses. I
wonder if in this process of the participants learning to operate the
system, the interaction becomes conscious and thus becomes active even it
started as passive? I have been looking for a word for the whole of the
system of this ‘new’ form of aesthetic experience which differs from
interactive art, but is not purely responsive either. You suggest term
cognitive feedback loop. How would you place this is the context of art,
would you call it cognitive feedback art?
I wonder if this would do enough justice to the body itself, or if indeed we
have then lost it (the body) somehow?
———————————————

RESPONSE:
I would not agree with the point that you make about passive interaction
i.e. that through the learning process/control of the user the work become
active. I think we talk about similar phenomena with slightly different
network of terms, which attempt to explain body-mind actions with a diverse
hermeneutic sensitivity. As I pointed out earlier the bodily passive status
means the way the body is used for interaction and not the quality whether
the art work activates conscious-subconscious processes. Passive interaction
refers to a bodily passive status, which activates
a sensitivity towards cognitive responses of the user (like emotions).
The interconnectivity of conscious-subconscious events or, from another
point of view, the relationship between embodied and new knowledge is
crucial to art works. However I describe this not with the differentiation
of active and passive but with the aesthetic conceptualisation of learning
processes in the interactive art work. To account for the learning process
(or as I term the ‘mastering the tool’ processes) means to operate between
embodied knowledge and action and the novelty of technology and content (new
knowledge and. non-predictable actions). As such, the aesthetic conception
of the mind-body nexus implies how we artists design the conscious-subconscious
relationship in the user’s experience.
I think the term Cognitive-feedback Art is too restrictive for me (similarly
Biofeedback Art). I think we already have to work with difficult terms such
as Software Art / Virtual Art or Internet Art which from my point of view do
not bring creditable differentiations to art as they only refer to the
medium but not to the content. I would describe this simply as
technology-based art, which focuses on cognitive qualities, the body-mind
nexus and the embodied/ novel knowledge. I would suggest that this is an
emerging form of interactive art, which introduces cognitive-driven
interaction (if we suggest that bodily status reciprocally provide
information about cognitive states). As such, in my interpretation
‘cognitive-feedback loop’ also refers to a bodily status. Even though the
semiotics of the body do not have particular role in this kind of
interactive works, this is why I called them passive interactions. The
cognitive-feedback loop however is an important term to explain a system,
which builds on cognitive qualities. Thus, the system attempts to evaluate
the data according to a cognitive status and according to this outcome the
‘instant affection technologies’ (see in my earlier email) attempts to act
upon the user to lead him/her to particular cognitive states. Therefore
‘cognitive-feedback loop’ is an interactive system which applies affective
computing and technologies.

Was thinking about how I could use accelerometers and gyroscopes to track and respond to rhythmic body movements, which got me thinking about Feldenkrais pelvic clock excersises, and then Hula hoop work. Seemed like a realy obvious and fund thing that the Wii people must have thought of, and indeed they have:

Interesting to note how for forceful this woman’s movements are. I think it should be possible to refine the way the animation and sounds respond to the Wii-fit data to attrach people to more gracefull, gentle movements: track velocity amplitudes, and emphasis the quieter actions, and revolutions per 5 seconds, and emphasise slower speeds.

Here’s a demonstration of Wii-Fit excersises from designers at Nintendo:

For the Maxers among us, there’s a thread on the Max-MSP forum re Wii-Fit interfaces for Max-MSP:

Eric Samothrakis:

You could try Osculator:
http://www.osculator.net/wiki/Main/HomePage
It supports Wii-Fit although “Some Wii-Fit balance boards are unfortunately not working properly (YMMV, a model bought in september was working perfectly).”

Oli Larkin:

a colleague of mine has connected the wii balance board to Max on windows using OSC via Glove Pie: http://carl.kenner.googlepages.com/glovepie

i also tried it on Mac using OSCulator, but seemed that not all the data was sent correctly

The journal of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences Volume 4, number 4 has a very interesting collection of papers of relevance to this project

I thought this article by Edward S. Katkin of the Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York, is an interesting review of G. Ádám (1998). Visceral Perception: Understanding Internal Cognition. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 232.

Edward Katkin titles his review, The last word on gut feelings, which I think is a more than appropriate subject for our consideration.