Syneseizure


Prepared By arielwaldman for sciencehackday

Syneseizure

A mask that tries to simulate synesthetic sensation by mashing up sight (via a webcam) with touch (via vibrating speakers). You can begin to navigate sight by touch and offering a fascinating way of playing with invisibility and visibility at the same time.

The Syneseizure Mask

Syneseizure was probably the creepiest hack seen at a Science Hack Day. It is a mask that tries to simulate synesthesia; a condition where your different senses get crossed. People with synesthesia will report associating certain colors with certain letters or maybe if someone hears a loud sound they might see a ripple across their vision. 

The multi-disciplinary team wanted to simulate a synesthetic sensation by mashing up sight (via a webcam) with touch (via vibrating speakers). Syneseizure is a fairly creepy looking hack: having only 24 hours to prototype it, the only mask sewing pattern the team could find was one for a gimp mask. Just going with it, they attached 12 vibrating speakers inside of the mask and wired them up to an Arduino and then a webcam. The result is an all-encompassing head mask that vibrates on different areas of your face corresponding with different visual information picked up by the webcam, thus creating a sense of feeling if areas of a room are lighter or darker as you navigate around. In a sense, you can begin to navigate sight by touch and this is a really fascinating way of playing with invisibility and visibility at the same time. The play of translating the visible spectrum into the invisible, offers a different way of navigating the world. 



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Acknowledgements & Credits

Creators

Bala Ramamurthy, Watson Watson, Lillian Fritz-Laylin, Meredith Carpenter Hamilton, Marissa Fessenden, Parker Imrie, Tymm Twillman, Greg Friedland, Fen Lipkowitz, Liam Holt

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