MAS110 FUNDAMENTALS OF COMPUTATIONAL MEDIA DESIGN
FINAL PROJECT

Synesthesia by ercu

Concept
"Synesthesia (Greek, syn = together + aisthesis = perception) is the involuntary physical experience of a cross-modal association. That is, the stimulation of one sensory modality reliably causes a perception in one or more different senses. It denotes the rare capacity to hear colors, taste shapes, or experience other equally startling sensory blendings whose quality seems difficult for most of us to imagine." *


Smell = Touch + See + Hear + Remember
In this project I want to enhance the experience of smelling with stimulating memory and other senses within a ritualistic context of wearing a perfume. I am proposing a cradle for the perfume bottles that interact and communicate with the user using the senses of hearing, seeing and touching in order to trigger memories and augment the sense of smell.

The cradle (available for him and her) is equipped with hotpants display and 3 switches, to trigger the events. The interaction starts when user touches the bottle. Led's on the cradle respond in a sensational way to your touch, responding with lighting up immediately and switch the led color when you release the bottle and holds on to the feeling of your touch with keeping his/her light on for 2 more seconds.

But the excitement starts when you lift up the bottle from the cradle,. S/he gets too excited and a second set of LED's start to flash in a frantic way. A moment after user sees a message on hotpants telling "pretty" or "handsome"… When you replace the bottle back to cradle the sequence stops…

Last step of interaction involves hearing. When you press the button of the atomizer you hear your lover's voice reading a poem to you or a part of your special song. Thanks to the built-in playback technology.

The goal of this project is to underline the feel of smell and try to enhance it with different senses to trigger the memory and evoke feelings with embedding the technology into an everyday action, emphasize and blur it at the same time with using it in an emotional context.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* taken from
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-10-cytowic.html
(c) Richard E. Cytowic 1995, PSYCHE, 2(10), July 1995