The Ultimate Relax to Win Dynamic

I came across an article in a Sunday newspaper a couple of weeks ago about an artist called xxxy who has created an installation using a BCI of sorts.  I’m piecing this together from what I read in the paper and what I could see on his site, but the general idea is this: person wears a portable EEG rig (I don’t recognise the model) and is placed in a harness with wires reaching up and up and up into the ceiling.  The person closes their eyes and relaxes – presumably as they enter a state of alpha augmentation, they begin to levitate courtesy of the wires.  The more that they relax or the longer they sustain that state, the higher they go.  It’s hard to tell from the video, but the person seems to be suspended around 25-30 feet in the air.

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Physiological Computing meets Augmented Reality in a Museum

First of all, an apology – Kiel and I try to keep this blog ticking over, but for most of 2011, we’ve been preoccupied with a couple of large projects and getting things organised for the CHI workshop in May.  One of the “things” that led to this hiatus on the blog is a new research project funded by the EU called ARtSENSE, which is the topic of this post.

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CHI 2011 – Accepted Workshop Papers

EDIT: Workshop papers can be found here.

Well done everyone, looking forward to meeting you all in May.

  • Access and Analysis: the Ethics of Brain-Computer Interfaces (Chauncey, K., Peck, E.)
  • The ‘Aha’ Moment: Using Psychophysiological Measures to Identify IT Entrepreneurial Epiphanies (Randolph, A. B., Mourmant, G.)
  • Better Brain Interfacing for the Masses: Progress in Event-Related Potential Detection using Commercial Brain Computer Interfaces (Grierson, M., Kiefer, C.)
  • Biometric Storyboards visualising meaningful gameplay events (Mirza-Babaei, P., McAllister, G.)
  • Directions in Physiological Game Evaluation and Interaction (Nacke, L.)
  • Framing Meaningful Adaptation in a Social Context (Peck, E., Lalooses, F., Chauncey, K.)
  • Grasp Interaction Using Physiological Sensor Data (Wimmer, R.)
  • Issues inherent in controlling the interpretation of the Physiological Cloud (Gilleade, K., Lee, K.)
  • Let Me Listen to Your Brain – Physiology-based Interaction in Collaborative Music Composition (Mealla C, S., Väljamäe, A., Bosi, M., Jordà, S.)
  • Online single trial ERN detection as an interaction aid in HCI applications (Vi, C., Subramanian, S.)
  • Meaningful Human-Computer Interaction Using fNIRS Brain Sensing (Solovey, E., Jacob, R.)
  • “Movemental”: Integrating Movement and the Mental Game (Pope, A., Stephens, C.)
  • The role of physiological computing in counteracting loneliness (Janssen, J., Westerink, J., IJsselsteijn, W., van der Zwaag, M.)
  • Tangent Society – Persistent Mobile Multiplayer Activity Logging Game (Kuikkaniemi, K., Kosunen, I., Laitinen, T., Vilkki, M.)
  • Unobtrusive Mood Assessment for Training Applications (Wingrave, C., Hoffman, M., LaViola Jr., J., Sottilare, R.)

Road rage, unhealthy emotions and affective computing

From the point of view of an outsider, the utility and value of computer technology that provides emotional feedback to the human operator is questionable.  The basic argument normally goes like this: even if the technology works, do I really need a machine to tell me that I’m happy or angry or calm or anxious or excited?  First of all, the feedback provided by this machine would be redundant, I already have a mind/body that keeps me fully appraised of my emotional status – thank you.  Secondly, if I’m angry or frustrated, do you really think I would helped in any way by a machine that drew my attention to these negative emotions, actually that would be particularly annoying.  Finally, sometimes I’m not quite sure how I’m feeling or how I feel about something; feedback from a machine that says you’re happy or angry would just muddy the waters and add further confusion.

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Predictions for 2011

Well there goes by another year I don’t get to spend the holidays playing with the Wii Vitality. I’m beginning to think Nintendo have given up on the whole idea of biofeedback adapted gaming given the lack of noise they’ve made since the platforms original announcement in June 2009. I originally bought my Wii on the premise that Nintendo was going to start the ball rolling on integrating biofeedback interfaces into mainstream games, and to that effect have speculated several times on the type of experiences we might see and how they would work (e.g. action games, lie-detection, relaxation and fitness). However it looks like this device will remain vaporware for the foreseeable future. Continue reading →

Studentships in Physiological Computing

Liverpool John Moores University
PhD Studentships in Applied Neuroscience/Psychophysiology
School of Natural Sciences and Psychology

EDIT: Application closed

Please quote Ref: IRC544

Applications are invited for two PhD studentships in the School of Natural Sciences and Psychology. The studentships consist of a tax-free stipend (currently £13,590 per annum for the 2010-2011 academic year) and tuition fees.

We seek candidates with a strong research background and interest in physiological computing research (http://www.physiologicalcomputing.net/) for a new research project funded by the EU. Specifically we are seeking to fund studentships in two areas associated with this project: –
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Emotiv EPOC and the triple dilemma of early adoption

The UK version of Wired magazine ran an article in last month’s edition (no online version available) about Emotiv and the development of the EPOC headset.  Much of the article focused on the human side of the story, the writer mixed biographical details of company founders with how the ideas driving the development of the headset came together.  I’ve written about Emotiv before here on a specific technical issue.  I still haven’t had any direct experience of the system, but I’d like to write about the EPOC again because it’s emerging as the headset of choice for early adopters.

In this article, I’d like to discuss a number of dilemmas that are faced by both the company and their customers.  These issues aren’t specific to Emotiv, they hold for other companies in the process of selling/developing hardware for physiological computing systems.

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Night of the Biocybernetic Zombies

Last month we played host to our project partners in REFLECT, an EU research project aimed at the development of pervasive-adaptive systems (NB. Ferrari + heart monitor = awesome). For the evening festivities a Shiverpool tour was arranged. Shiverpool is a Liverpool based theatre performance in which the audience is taken on a night tour of the city by a spirit guide who regales his audience with stories about Liverpool’s supernatural past. The guide is also accompanied by several ghoulish friends (or fiends, depending if your the target of the next scare or not). To add a little bit more spice to the evening we brought along the heart monitors and wired up five members of our group to see once more Who’s afraid of Ghost Stories? Unfortunately not everything went to plan, we had a few issues with the hardware causing a significant level of data loss preventing a detailed commentary about individual responses as was done with Ghost Stories, so instead I thought it would a good time to talk about the heart monitors we use and the software platform that runs The Body Blogger which we used for this event. Continue reading →

An evening with Stelarc

Stelarc, the famous performance artist known for his work on manipulating the human body and cybernetics, visited the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT), based in Liverpool, earlier this month to talk about his recent projects. To our good fortune we managed to land an interview with Stelarc in order to discuss the intersection between his work and the field of Physiological Computing.

"Circulating Flesh: The Cadaver, The Comatose & The Chimera" a talk by Stelarc at FACT

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