An interaction design venture into the realm of the senses - what happens when you cross your sight with your hearing?
Close your eyes for a moment and listen. The steps of people moving about, their voices echoing around you. Someone’s walking down a flight of stairs. Elsewhere, laughter can be heard. You see all this in your mind’s eye, without ever opening your own. Without sight, your other senses fill in.
As you read this, your peripheral vision is telling you who just walked past and how far you are from them. From experience you know how close you are to the wall behind you. This is what your unaided vision tells you.
What would happen if you relied on what you hear to be your sight? Blind people do this every day. What would it be like if the things around you echoed back to you, screaming and singing about how near or far they were?
XSense is an experiment with senses, made by a group of Interaction Design students at Malmö University, School of Arts and Communication.
Wearing XSense, the sounds from outside turns into a synaesthete's colorful vision. And the environment you normally see, turns into a sonic landscape. You must trust your mind's eye to describe this new world around you. Will you let go of your fears and venture into it?
Designers:
Adam Danielsson, Per Nilsson, Melvin Ochsmann, Koen Van Mol, Robert Winters, Tamara Klein, Andreas Nertlinge
The XSense wearable. Click image for another view.
XSense is going on a trip down to Spain. Part of the team will be attending the Interactivos workshop in Madrid, Spain, organized by Media lab Madrid. XSense will be exhibited among the workshop projects, and work has begun to stabilize the prototype electronics.
After weeks of hard work, the team has completed the prototype. It's being exhibited at K3 until friday December 21st.