| Elizabeth Goodman Three ideas for physical computing projects. 1) "The Breathing Room" is an idea for an installation that would externalize one of the interior, unconscious bodily processes that we rarely pay attention to: our breath. The walls of a small room would bulge in and out, mimicking the motion of lungs. (I imagine that the "walls" would actually be loose panels of cloth blown in and out by multidirectional fans.) The rhythm of the walls would adjust itself to match the rhythm of each visitor's breath, in imitation not just of the unnoticed action of the lungs but also of the way in which two lovers, sleeping in the same bed, often synchronize their breathing rates as they fall asleep. 2) "Friendly cloth" is a rug-like surface that registers the changing temperature or the presence of body heat by extruding/retracting long fibers to trap/release heat to become either a deep-pile rug or a hard mat. 3) Social Lanterns -- I would love to display the swirls and eddies of conversations in large groups of people by stringing up a network of tiny mobiles on wires across the ceiling of a large room during a party. Sensors respond to changing decibel and body heat levels in different areas of the room by raising and lowering the wires, thus creating the impression almost of a school of fish swimming around the ceiling in response to ripples of conversation emerging in the small groups of people chatting below. (And yes, I fully realize that this is probably as much a pipe dream as the friendly cloth.) |