Playing with Emotions: Biosignal-based Control in Virtual Reality Game Project H.E.A.R.T.
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Matters Mattering: Collective Interactions and Play [cont.]
Presentation Title:
- Playing with Emotions: Biosignal-based Control in Virtual Reality Game Project H.E.A.R.T.
Presenter(s):
Abstract:
Project H.E.A.R.T. is an interactive virtual reality-based installation which probes the ‘militainment’ video game genre as a satirical starting point for exploring pop culture, mediated violence, empathy, automation. and quantification of emotional engagement. Project H.E.A.R.T. invites the viewer to place their fingers on a custom biodata gathering device, and then summon their enthusiasm to engage a holographic pop star as a form of ‘combat therapy’. The emotional labor of the viewer is quantified through biosensing technologies, giving the viewer indirect emotional control over artificial agents. The narrative of the work implicates the viewer in military violence through their affective participation in entertainment technologies, highlighted in VR through the voyeuristic gaze.
The incorporation of physiological metrics into artificial agents fosters a liminal situation between the VR user’s corporeal body and virtual space. In an era of self-help apps and biometric devices for controlling one’s emotional state, Project H.E.A.R.T. embodies a dystopic and satiristic interpretation of these technologies, as well as the limits of technologically mediated empathy and sincerity often championed as the new frontier for interaction in virtual contexts.
