Still during Rebecca Allen's talk:
The MindGames group at MIT media lab Europe which develops technologies that can expand and improve human potential, they rely on signals coming directly from our bodies to interact with technology.

One of the Games is "Collective Calm", it observes the "Galvanic Skin Response", that phenomenon that happens when we are stressed or nervous, we start sweating and our body betrays that nervousness whether we want it or not.

Collective Calm is a biofeedback video game where you have to relax if you want to win.

Relaxation is measured via a handheld orb that measures each player's Galvanic Skin Response, which is then wirelessly transmitted to the game.

It's the exact opposite of many usual games that put players in a nervous state. Collective Calm also has the benefit to help players learn how they body react, responds, work to stimuli.

Rebecca Allen also taleked about MIT media lab group called "Palpable machines", which works a lot with our sense of touch, a sense that works only when someone is getting close to us.

The "Body Mnemonics" project is a meta tool for portable devices that uses the body to store information: your bank account could be on your right leg, the photo of your family near your heart, your music archive could be located at your ear.

Rebecca Allen group at MIT lab is called "Liminal devices", it studies the frontiers between the virtual and the real world.

The first project she presented yesterday was the MyoPhone.
While we are used to displays like those of PC, PDA or mobile phone, the MIT group is working on new displays that would leave our hands totally free, displays embeded into eye glasses, not the kind that make you look like astronauts, but normal eyeglasses. Displays are located both right on the lens and in the frame to give periferal vision.

Such displays won't be used to read books but to do simple things, like to find a phone number or get information about a restaurant.

You can see the normal world through these lens.
And other people are not aware of the fact that you can see other things too.

The application is called the MyoPhone.

How does it work? When you receive phone call, you'll know it because a LED ligth will brighten on the len, you can go on talking with the person in front of you and by contracting muscles, you will also be able to send a message to say "call me later". Thanks to the chips placed on your muscles, all you'll have to do to select data or scroll a page like a mouse is to tighten these muscles.
The interaction is subtle and intimate, the technology does not disrupt your physical environment.

Fascinating talk by Rebecca Allen from MIT media lab in Dublin.

She first talked about one of the piece here in Ars Futura: developed with Ronan Coyle and Hannes Nehls, Liminal Identity blurs the boundaries between the physical and the virtual worlds.
So there's this shipping box with 2 holes, you put your head inside one of the hole and can see the face of another person who put his head inside the hole too, but the result is an image that mixed both your and his/her identities.

Moreover, the box is "stealing" the image to display it elsewhere, and you see it floating like a ghost among other faces.

Then there's also here a new kind of interface that you activate just using your breath, you blow and see the virtual reality lanscape change: the weather turns sunny or bad, for example.

That's what Rebecca Allan calls Augmented Virtuality. So far, you thought it was cool to talk about augmented reality, but she's working on augmented virtuality where we have a virtual world that we enhance with video images of face or with our own breath.

Martin Chatrand, Director of SAT and R&D presented SAT in Montreal (Quebec) a transdisciplinary centre focussing on the creation of new tools to answer the artists creative needs.

So far they've developped a series of software that anybody can download for free so that any community can benefit from their research and hopefully contribute to it later.

He briefly introduced nSLAM, pixelTANGO, teleCHACHA (which is here in Art Futura to allow visitors to try telepresence activities, sit down and speak with other people in direct from Montreal), lightTWIST.

The next project for SAT is to put all these application in a single dome and tour the world to present them.

On Saturday, they present "Pheromones", an installation that will connects thanks to optical fiber network the Mercat de les Flors here in Barcelona ant the head office of the SAT in Montreal to share music and images generated on both side of the planet, by means of 8 audio channels and immersive multiscreens.