Week 03

Project Proposal

This is the initial plan regarding my final project. At this moment, it mainly includes things that I would like to explore during the process. I still need to learn more about these options until I can narrow down my project.

Physical

I would like to experiment with capacitive sensors to see how they behave, particularly through wood. This could be a wooden surface, possibly CNC machines, that would hide the sensors and act as a type of interface. I am curious about the accuracy and versatility of the possible inputs for those hidden capacitive sensors.

I also want to test out the inputs received from a heartbeat sensor. This would explore possibilities of using a heartbeat or a heart rate curve to interact with digital content. I am interested in testing how reliably this data can be measured, how versatile the data can be, and if it can be altered by the user.

Digital

I am interested in creating a digital artwork that reacts to users’ inputs. This would be something visually calming and organic. In its movement, it could resemble something like the surface of water, swaying hay in the wind, or other abstractions of nature.

Another concept that I would like to explore is a game that would rely on the player’s heartbeat as an input. This would be a top-down stealth game with horror elements. The goal is to progress through labyrinth-like levels without getting sensed by enemies. The player’s heartbeats are measured, and each pulse will be visualized as a pulse of light around the character. This pulse can be sensed by all the enemies that are close enough, making it crucial to pass the enemies between the pulses. This way, the increasing heart rate of the player will also make the game harder, as the character will be more often visible to the enemies.

Possible requirements

• Heartbeat sensor • Capacitive sensor • CNC machined wooden surface