A Wearable Experiment to Radiate Prosocial Wellbeing Through Psychophysiological Mirroring of Laughter

Symposium:

• ISEA2015: 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from ISEA2015:  

• Art, Wellbeing and Society

• A Wearable Experiment to Radiate Prosocial Wellbeing Through Psychophysiological Mirroring of Laughter

• Emily Ip
• Wynnie Wing Yi Chung
• Thecla Schiphorst

•  (Short paper)

  Keywords: Wearable Technology, laughter, responsive wearable, psychophysiological mirroring, social mimicry, emotion contagion, prosocial behaviour, social convention

  Based on a practical somaesthetics framework emphasizing the values of self experiences, this paper presents the design rationale of a responsive dress, Laughing Dress, which employs laughter as an agent to highlight the unobvious and unspoken social distance between strangers and inverting our cultural notion of public selfcontainment. The proposed wearable dress is used to investigate the concept, “disruption for reformation”. Throughout the design process, the prototype addressed the research question, “Can exposing self-representations through synthetic sound as inner voice and rhythmic light as somatic energy rattle and provoke reposition of us against existing social norms of private-public space?” The research instrument aims to break personal boundaries by magnifying wearer’s self-presence, enticing a psychophysiological mirroring of laughter in another entity, and evoking a sense of curiosity through a display of visual aesthetics. The unusual display and magnification of self-presence within public setting contributes to disruption of social expectation on selfcontainment in public, reflection upon the organic form of human-to-human interaction, and initiation to realign our behaviour.

• Full Text (PDF) p.  43-46

Category:

• Paper