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Futurefest

 Posted on March 16, 2015      by justin
 0

I had a really interesting shoot at futurefest‬ on Saturday.

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Including the world premiere of Neurosis‬, a mixed-reality thrill ride developed by Professor Brendan Walker’s Thrill Laboratory, with the support of Middlesex University‬, Horizon Research Institute, Arts Council England, and friends.

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Neurosis features a six-degree-of-freedom motion simulator and virtual reality headset to immerse the rider in a surreal environment, controlled not by a ride operator, but by the rider’s own brain activity. This activity generates an audio-visual virtual world where pathways emerge, tumbling, twisting and twirling the rider through a psychedelic landscape.

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The rider’s real-time neurological responses to music, motion and visible wonders, activate fairground lighting; this spectacular neuro-data constantly transforms the futuristic ride artwork. Music pumps as the simulator mechanism undulates and sways.

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Another amazing bit of technology is the Blind Robot. In this installation, visitors are invited to sit in the front of this machine and engage into a non-verbal dialogue with the Blind Robot. The robot delicately explores the body, mostly the face, of the visitor in a manner that recalls what the blind humans are doing to recognize a person or an object.

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My Robot Companion: Familiar, Would you prefer a robot if it looked like one of the family? This robot is able to take on the appearance of any face it sees or even combine features from a group of faces in order to promote bonding with it.

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Of course this can also lead to a feeling of discomfort known in robotics as “the uncanny valley” (Mori, 1970), where users feel a sense of repulsion as robots become very human-like (in this case very like themselves and their companions) but stopping short of being wholly human.

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There were loads of discussions featuring guests like Vivienne Westwood, Jon Cruddas MP, Natalie Bennett & Edward Snowdon.

http://futurefest.org/

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