Constituting Spatiality: Wearable Computing, Cognitive Mixing

Viewer wearing HMD

(http://lincolnlab.net/freespace.html)

Erika Lincoln's, work-in-progress, Free Space Loss, is comprised of a seemingly elaborate, although described as low-fi, wearable computing system. The artist has created a series of HMD's, which link the participant/viewer to a feedback mechanism where by the sensors pre-installed inside the helmet measure the temperature, light and acoustic levels of the body wearing it. Measuring or quantifying the viewer's physiological "output" or environmentally mediated bodily responses, implicates the viewer's body & bodily responses in the art work, as determining variables for the viewer's particularised spatial experience. This data is firstly transmitted to a computer software program, which creates four different 3D landscape planes that the viewer "experiences", as this landscape is transmitted back to the internal LCD monitor installed on the HMD.

Inside the artist's studio ...

(http://lablog-lincolnlab.blogspot.com/)

The syntactic arrangement of the words in the title, Free Space Loss, on first glance, seem to instantiate an oxymoron. However the accompanying image of wireless signals spreading out over time and distance, illustrates the simultaneity of freeing/opening/expanding virtual spaces at the cost of "losing", perhaps reducing or altering would be better here, the materiality of actual space, or requiring a reconsideration of our invested certainty in actual spatial realities.

Interested in the communicative potentialities of embodied experience, the actual bodily responses to specific experiences generating data that may be translated into shifting topographical planes through the mediation of a software program. Landscape image projected initially onto the monitor will be one the viewer perhaps recognises as the artist is using images collected from the actual landscape surrounding the gallery. So prior to installation the artist describes how she goes for walks gathering images, which will be transformed into emerging 3D topographical maps as the HMD and software system are sensitive to physiological changes the viewer undergoes. Consequently these changes are reflected in the landscape the viewer "sees" - presumably from visually recognisable spaces to unfamiliar imaginings or representations, to something that no longer correlates with the actual space because the viewers embodied experience has brought about radical alterations. Interestingly Lincoln has also installed an audio channel enabling a dialogue between viewers. Upon discussing what they observe on their monitors, collectively they can organise the behaviour of the landscape plane.

Image of virtual landscapes as seen from inside helmet

(http://lincolnlab.net/freespace.html)

Choosing the term, Virtual Virtual Reality (VVR) over say, mixed reality, suggests the artist wants to emphasise that images are literally taken from actual life and "altered", through the embodied perceptual processes of the viewers - mediated through both the wearable computing and software systems. Heightening the separability, rather than a fluid interpenetration, of actual and virtual realms. However Lincoln does address the "mixing" evident in her work by describing the "interchange between individuals, environment & [technological/augmentative] devices as creating a mixed cognitive space." She points out that the viewer must negotiate between their knowledge of the physical world outside of the helmet and the visual topographical and aural based knowledge they gain from watching their monitor and discussions with others, within the helmet. This actual-virtual negotiation of space, that which is actual-virtual simultaneously, creates a distinct experience of space.

Close up of one of the planes

(http://lincolnlab.net/freespace.html)

The images on the monitor continually interact with the viewers' own bodily responses and discussions with others, and so are not articulated through clear-cut frontal perception (Hansen 197). In fact embodied perception produces the changing landscape planes, "tonal responses to" an ever adjusting body (Hansen 197). Embodiment is the medium through which this work is experienced, "space becomes wearable when embodied affectivity becomes the operator of spacing" (Hansen 175). Space is literally worn on the body (by way of the LCD monitor installed on the HMD), and becomes fully wearable as embodied perceptual processes coupled with the physiological bodily changes (which are inextricably linked to the affective embodied response and experience) operate and constitute the spatial experience of the art work itself (Hansen 197).

~ Works Cited ~

Hansen, Mark. Bodies in Code. New York: Routledge, 2006.