Biometric Social Interaction (BSI) explores how people socialize based on their biosignals rather than their outward appearance or attitude. BSI was at Festival della Creativita in Florence 12. October to 19. October, 2009.

Biometric Social Interaction

Two of Illutron’s members, Dzl and Vanessa of GeekPhysical developed Biometric Social Interaction. Biometric Social Interaction (BSI) explores how people socialize based on their biosignals rather than their outward appearance or attitude. It considers heart rate and galvanic skin response, two easily gaugeable qualities that reflect a person’s state of being. Originally developed as the Critical Corset (http://illutron.dk/posts/170) BSI evolved to first include temperature and then galvanic skin response. We first tried the system at the Half Machine summer event of 2008 and then at a Swedish night club, exploring how people interacted once biosignals were present. We were then invited to Festival della Creativita (http://2009.festivaldellacreativita.it/) where we debuted the BSI system: four people sit around a projection space and put on a finger sensor and infrared accessorized sunglasses hanging from the ceiling.

Our goal and Festival della Creativita:

We wanted to create a space where people could gather and interact socially while exploring their biosignals. We created a 5m X 5m space with a separate 3m x 3m area for people to sit in. The sitting area allows for four visitors to be hooked up to the BSI system and to explore their biosignals in visual patterns. The other space had info-graphics explaining temperature, pulse, galvanic skin response and brainwaves, each with a sensor to test biosignals. The temperature poster had a temperature gun beside it to read temperature. The pulse poster had a heart rate sensor, the GSR a skin resistance sensor and we used OCZ’s Neural Impulse Actuator for the brain wave measurements, projecting the “Brainfingers” on to the wall for people to explore.

The sensors:

The finger sensor contains a heart rate sensor in the form of an LED which shines light on your finger, and a photo transistor which measures the amount of light passing through your finger. As blood pulses through your finger, the amount of light seen changes, (the light intensity changes) and the photo transistor records values. This indicates heartrate. Two metal buttons measure skin resistance to give us our Galvanic skin response and the photo resistor is housed in between them. Finally, the infrared equipped sunglasses add an air of mystery, allowing strangers to stare at each other with minimal discomfort, and to direct their stream of biosignals to another person.

The display:

Visitors sit in four chairs surrounding a white rectangle. The display is projected from above, and visitor’s heart rates are shown by red pulses on the ground in front of them. Their galvanic skin response is shown by blue streaks jetting from their origin point when they experience pain, pleasure or emotion. Visitors can direct the flow of heart rate and GSR to other visitors by gazing at them, using the infrared on the sunglasses to connect to other visitors.

Observations:

Visitors at Festival della Creativita were mainly Italian speaking so we had a hard time explaining how things worked. People started playing however, and while half the people understood the concept and tried jumping around or pinching themselves to affect the sensors, the other half played with the gaze detector, sending colors and biostreams to others.

Credits:

Dzl built the hardware, all sensors (with the exception of the Neural Impulse Actuator from OCZ) and all software using extensive filtering to normalize heart rate and GSR and writing his own algorithms to determine the best responses given a very wide range in people, young and old, healthy and less healthy, hyper and sedentary.

Vanessa developed the concept for how interaction would take place between people in the BSI system and designed the exhibition space including the social relaxing space (posters with sensors on wall to introduce biometrics) and the BSI system area (4 person on floor interaction).

Many, many thanks to Jonas Halfdanj Jongejan and Jonas Eriksson. Jongejan helped us to develop the software visualizations and directed us to use the ofxMSAFluid for openFrameworks. Eriksson designed the posters for the exhibition, our website (http://www.geekphysical.com) and developed the idea to project on the floor, engaging people through interaction on the floor as opposed to the typical wall projection.