Repurposing Laughter in a Wearable Design for Social Interaction


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Presentation Title:
  • Repurposing Laughter in a Wearable Design for Social Interaction

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Abstract:

  • Keywords: Wearable technology, laughter, responsive wearable tech, psychophysiological mirroring, social mimicry, emotion contagion, prosocial behavior

    This paper presents the potentials of laughter, a natural body expression that can elicit enjoyment and positive mood, as a bodyhacking intervention on physical social isolation. We report on our exploratory research investigating how an audio-visual aesthetic for laughter on a wearable design can prompt a sensibility of social warmth and connectedness within a shared public space. Laughing Dress is a wearable responsive garment that displays light and audio representations of social distances based on physical distances and kinetic interactions between wearer and colocated participants. Through deconstructing and repurposing the body’s organic composition of laughter, new perspectives on our human and social body, against other human entities are introduced in relation to our situated environment. This new paradigm of transferring positive emotion through a wearable tangible interaction design initiates new public interaction possibilities for prosocial connection and bonding.

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