Move IQ: The Concept
Critical Making (APRD 5006-002)
Assignment 1: Final Project ConceptThe Backdrop
We’re a society obsessed with bodies: how they’re shaped, how they age, what we put in them, and what we put on them.
In 2017, Americans spent $66 billion on weight loss and $16.7 billion on cosmetic surgery. And a study commissioned by GroupOn found that the average American woman will spend a quarter of a million dollars on her appearance over the course of her life.
The massive amount of money and attention funneled toward our bodies betrays our obsession with how bodies are perceived — an external focus that distracts from how bodies impact internal lives.
This reality — that your physical body and its activity affects your mental state — is no secret, as any yogi or runner will tell you. The idea has recently gained more prominence in psychology as researchers have documented that certain movements can trigger emotions. For example, by straightening posture and taking up more space, you can decrease your cortisol levels and thus alleviate stress and anxiety.
The road to adopting such discoveries into clinical practice or popular application, however, is slow. A psych professor at Boston University admits that psychologists are not officially taught how to encourage movement or exercise as a form of therapy or treatment. He goes on to say, “People know that exercise helps physical outcomes. There is much less awareness of mental health outcomes — and much, much less ability to translate this awareness into exercise action.”
The Concept
Move IQ is an interactive art installation designed to help participants discover the connection between their physical movements and their mood state through a tangible, sensory experience.
Sensors attached to the participants’ wrists, ankles, and head track their movements in real time. A software program interprets those inputs on a series of continuums, including speed, acceleration, and distance between sensors. The continuums control properties for the visualization, which is projected on the walls of the performance space. Active, steady movement results in warm colors, softer shapes, and open spaces. Closed, small movements (or prolonged stillness) result in dark colors, small shapes, and closed-off spaces.
As participants move through the space, painting the walls with the colors and patterns created by their own movements, a few things happen: Participants first become self-aware of the space their body inhabits and the motions they choose to make. Then, as they self-consciously explore the space they take up, they begin to infer a connection between their own movements and the mood manifested on walls.
The outcome is an experiential rewiring that spurs participants to reflect on the interconnectedness of the body and mind, and their own potential influence on mood via physical movement.
The Challenge
In order to execute this, my primary lines of inquiry are:
- Taking into account cost and feasibility, which sensor technologies should I evaluate to support my vision for real-time input from wearable devices?
- Can I build relative location into the sensor/visualization relationship (i.e. 3 projectors in Studio display 3 different screens, and the location of a participant’s visualization depends on their location in room/space)?
- How can the psychology of color and shape inform the design of the visualization element?
- How can I incorporate other senses (sound, touch, interaction with other humans) into the installation?
- How do I build a visualization program that relies on real-time input?
- Can I develop this for use by multiple participants at one time?
Stay tuned.
