Sonic Virtual Reality Game: How Does Your Body Sound?

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present an interactive system that uses the body as a generative tool for creating music. We explore innovative ways to make music, create self-awareness, and provide the opportunity for unique, interactive social experiences. The system uses a multi-player game paradigm, where players work together to add layers to a soundscape of three distinct environments. Various sensors and hardware are attached to the body and transmit signals to a workstation, where they are processed using Max/MSP. The game is divided into three levels, each of a different soundscape. The underlying purpose of our system is to move the player's focus away from complexities of the modern urban world toward a more internalized meditative state. The system is currently viewed as an interactive installation piece, but future iterations have potential applications in music therapy, bio games, extended performance art, and as a prototype for new interfaces for musical expression

LIKE CATCHING A WAVE: QUALITATIVE STUDY OF EEG NEUROFEEDBACK GAME CONTROLS

Seven musicians engaged in EEG neurofeedback (NF) training of a new protocol designed to practice the switch between different mindsets. Three different sonic games programmed to reward distinct EEG parameters were administered twice in a row. Interviews were performed after each training session in order to obtain full description of the inner processes that surfaced while playing the NF game. The interviews were subjected to theoretically driven thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to identify the ways of direct interaction of the player with the NF game, through the optics of the player.We were able to identify 22 different techniques that were used to control the game, further referred to as neurofeedback game controls, which can be loosely united under six superordinate terms: body movements, different levels of activation, direction of attention, interaction with the sound, thoughts that change the mindset, the flow.Most of the individual game controls have a different function in each of the three different games of our training protocol, the effectivity of each one varying between players. Nevertheless, several game controls appeared to have power over all three games and across the subjects – a mindset characterized by thoughts scoping through the player’s focus unwillingly while attracting her attention was leading to a failure in the NF game, while a mindset characterized by the absence of content attracting attention was associated with the success in the NF game. Delving deeply into the game, concentrating without trying hard and closing the eyes also helped the players to better perform in all three games. Furthermore, the feeling of being successful in the game led to further success.This paper aims to explore an insufficiently described area of NF research and possibly offer an alternative framework that, in the future, when more knowledge is accumulated, would provide neurofeedback researchers and practitioners with more vocabulary theoretically useful for further research and practice

Biosensing and Actuation—Platforms Coupling Body Input-Output Modalities for Affective Technologies

Research in the use of ubiquitous technologies, tracking systems and wearables within mental health domains is on the rise. In recent years, affective technologies have gained traction and garnered the interest of interdisciplinary fields as the research on such technologies matured. However, while the role of movement and bodily experience to affective experience is well-established, how to best address movement and engagement beyond measuring cues and signals in technology-driven interactions has been unclear. In a joint industry-academia effort, we aim to remodel how affective technologies can help address body and emotional self-awareness. We present an overview of biosignals that have become standard in low-cost physiological monitoring and show how these can be matched with methods and engagements used by interaction designers skilled in designing for bodily engagement and aesthetic experiences. Taking both strands of work together offers unprecedented design opportunities that inspire further research. Through first-person soma design, an approach that draws upon the designer’s felt experience and puts the sentient body at the forefront, we outline a comprehensive work for the creation of novel interactions in the form of couplings that combine biosensing and body feedback modalities of relevance to affective health. These couplings lie within the creation of design toolkits that have the potential to render rich embodied interactions to the designer/user. As a result we introduce the concept of “orchestration”. By orchestration, we refer to the design of the overall interaction: coupling sensors to actuation of relevance to the affective experience; initiating and closing the interaction; habituating; helping improve on the users’ body awareness and engagement with emotional experiences; soothing, calming, or energising, depending on the affective health condition and the intentions of the designer. Through the creation of a range of prototypes and couplings we elicited requirements on broader orchestration mechanisms. First-person soma design lets researchers look afresh at biosignals that, when experienced through the body, are called to reshape affective technologies with novel ways to interpret biodata, feel it, understand it and reflect upon our bodies