Speculative Sensory Augmentation Devices
5 designs that imagine the future possibilities for enhancing our senses
From seeing hidden colours of the light spectrum to understanding information through our skin, Sensory Augmentation devices merge the human with technology to open up new sensory abilities — and the possibilities are potentially endless. In previous blogs we have looked at several people who already use the technology and how it affects their lives in unique ways. Here we will look at the work of some designers who have speculated upon new possibilities for Sensory Augmentation, imagining future technology that is not yet in our reach. The designers use Speculative Critical Design methods to envision future scenarios where the technology would be used, and provoke conversations about the social and behavioural changes they might create.
While reading imagine if you were augmented with these technologies, and think about how it would affect your life.
ANTHROPOMORPHIC SENSORY AUGMENTATION
Lesley-Ann Daly, 2016
For this project I explored — ‘What if you could hear inside your body, allowing you to have a more intuitive, real time knowledge of your health and wellbeing?’ A network of implanted devices enhance your sense of hearing, using ultrasonic sound to communicate the health of your organs to an in-ear auditory device, like a cochlear implant. The Anthropomorphic Sensory Augmentation collection (top image) features an implanted cardiac monitor (heart), nutrition tracker (stomach) and toxicity evaluator (liver) — so if you are giving your body good nutrients or are damaging your health your organs will literally tell you. The project builds on current wearable health tracking technology, but instead of using visual infographics on an app, it appropriates the intuitive qualities of sound — creating a more visceral connection to your health information and therefore the body.
By knowing your health in real-time the project speculates on how this information could change the person’s behaviours, perceptions of food and their own body. Will this enhance how we exercise, knowing when to stop and when to push harder? Will we start to design food that ‘sounds’ tasty? Or will we try to subvert the information and drown out ‘unhealthy’ sounding food and exercises so that we can continue without the guilt?
EIDOS
Tim Bouckley, Millie Clive-Smith, Mi Eun Kim and Yuta Sugawara (RCA), 2013
The group of RCA students created EIDOS to question — ‘What if we had control over our senses?’ We are used to controlling the world around us, finding the settings that suit us best, but if we could adjust our sensory information live what new experiences could this make possible?
EIDOS comprises of two head pieces which tune into specific visual and auditory information and give the wearer the power to adjust them, augmenting reality in real-time. The eyepiece records visual information and slows it down so you can see traces of movement — like long-exposure photography. The second piece fits over the mouth and ears and can capture, isolate and amplify sound so you can focus in, for example, on people talking or drown out background noise. The team sees speculative applications for enhancing live performances, improving focus and attention in class and helping people with auditory impairments.
AUDIO TOOTH
Auger Loizeau, 2002
James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau created the Audio Tooth as a ‘radical new concept in personal communication’. The device would be implanted in your tooth at a routine dentist appointment, and would allow you to receive audio, via a connected phone receiver, hearing it in your inner-ear through bone conduction. The tooth allows discrete communication in social situations where it would otherwise be infeasible and builds upon the trend towards miniature implanted biotechnology.
Following the public release of the project, it was taken up by numerous mainstream UK newspapers and TV shows, believing the speculative device was in fact real — with TIME magazine calling it one of the best inventions of 2002! This provoked mixed reactions — with some people were fervently against the technology being put in their bodies despite its minimal invasiveness and potential social benefits. While there are no plans to actually make this technology, the project highlights pertinent issues around the public’s acceptance of future implanted devices, and the merger of the body with technology.
GENETIC TRACE
Susana Soares, 2007
Soares explores the future of genetic technology for social interaction and partner selection by creating a selection of extension ‘organs’. These speculative organs ‘act as perception enhancers, allowing them [the wearer] to collect genetic material during interpersonal encounters.’ The organ pictured will allow the woman to smell genetic differences in potential partners, collecting information which tells her if they are a good future mate. Other extensions include bristly nails which will scrape DNA during handshakes, and eyebrow whiskers that will pick up signals in the environment.
With advances in biotechnology, genetic engineering and nanotechnology we will become less dependent on natural selection and able to direct our evolution, creating technologies that will change how we perceive the world. However these smell augmentations will need to become acceptable both as technologies and as social practices. The extensions would redefine the acceptability of facial hair and openly smelling people when interacting with them!
TOUCHED BY TIME
Oryan Inbar, 2016
Inbar states ‘I have no sense of time. My thesis is an experiment to see if I can develop one’ — to do so he created a haptic temporal device. The interface maps time down his spine and relays it to him through vibrations throughout the day, using his skin as an interface. Not meant as a consumer product, the device was a behavioural experiment to explore how time is perceived and whether it could eventually be changed. After learning to haptically sense time, Inbar would then slow down or speed up the vibrations frequency to explore if it would cause him to perceive time as moving faster or slower. Think about how augmenting our sense of time could change how we structure our days, weeks and years?
Following this project Inbar went on to work with Neil Harbisson on his Time Sense a similar experiment around temporal perception. They designed the ‘Solar Crown’, a headpiece which relayed time to the wearer as heat sensations around the circumference of the head — however no further research has been published on it’s results.
These speculative technologies are just a glimpse of the different possible Sensory Augmentation devices that could be produced in the future. The projects explore the abilities the devices would give us and potential perceptual and behavioural changes they may induce, plus a glimpse at the societal changes that would be needed for this technology to become socially acceptable. Imagine if we all had these sensory enhancement devices, how would it change how we go about our daily lives? And what if we all had different ones — how might that change how we interact with one another?
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