IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

Mobility 65
distance—but indirectly. The team explored what happens when gesture,
expressions, heartbeat, breathing, and alpha and beta rhythm information
are incorporated into long-distance communication via objects that pulse,
glow, and murmur. The Faraway team used heat to help participants experience
the warmth in one application, DistantOne: A sender activates a
‘‘bean’’ by touch that heats up and sends a signal to another bean, held by
another person located at a distance, which also heats up. Another application,
Heart, allows someone to share his or her heartbeat with another in a
similar fashion. 37
Could there be electronic crowds? Could virtual networked contexts also
substitute for mobility of groups? A project in Europe called eRENA (Electronic
Arenas for Culture, Art, Performance and Entertainment) focused
on the development of information spaces inhabited by such groups. In
trials, audience members, as well as performers and artists, explored, interacted,
communicated with one another, and participated in staged events.
The aim of this dynamic crowd aggregation was to give hundreds or thousands
of simultaneous participants a sense of sharing the same space.
eRENA brought together digital artists, experts in multiuser virtual reality
and computer animation, social scientists, broadcasters, experts in threedimensional
immersive video environments and other projected interfaces,
networking expertise, spatial technologies, and novel artistic content. A
market for online crowds big enough to justify the costs of the necessary
technology and bandwidth has not yet emerged. 38
Sometimes mobility to a place is physically impossible. Then substitute
methods can work to a degree. One such place is the bottom of the ocean.
It is possible to translate real-time sonar and acoustic tomography data into
a visual display of undersea terrain and objects. A head-mounted display
configured for 3-D sight and hearing allows the wearer to perceive images
of whatever lies in the depths below the ship that carries him or her—the
shape of the sea floor as transmitted by remote sensors beneath the ship.
The Human Interface Technology Laboratory at the University of Washington
is planning an acoustigraphics library that will contain objects such as
fish that one can hear coming; the pitch of the associated sound becomes
higher as the fish approach the participant and lower as they move away.
Undersea technology used for submarine tracking by the military has been
adapted for undersea resource management and underwater construction,
maintenance, and repair.