I just sent the final paper off to the organizers of CAADRIA 2011.
It is rather a rare paper by Andrew Dekker and myself as it talks about atmosphere, 19th Century German empathy theory, Heidegger (indirectly), Wild Divine biofeedback and Zombies. Actually it is not really about Zombies but about how indirect biofeedback could be used for architectural visualization, social worlds and virtual places in general. I was trying to make the case for indirect biofeedback to augment the environment, and to allow enhanced information or interaction based on mastering/achieving calm, rather than on raising excitement levels. It is a step in my attempt to convey an experience of holy places and cultural sites using (indirect) biofeedback. Biofeedback has been seen as highly subjective, variable, and unreliable as a direct interaction method which is one of the reasons I am so interested it as indirect and augmenting rather than direct and dominant. Anyway, the abstract follows:
INDIRECT BIOFED ARCHITECTURE
Strategies to best utilise biofeedback tools and interaction metaphors within digital architectural environmentsThis paper explains potential benefits of indirect biofeed-back used within interactive virtual environments, and reflects on an earlier study that allowed for the dynamic modification of a virtual environment’s graphic shaders, music and artificial intelligence (of Non Playing Characters) based on the biofeedback of the player. It then examines both the potential and the issues in applying biofeed-back (already effective for games) to digital architectural environ-ments, and suggests potential uses such as personalization, object creation, atmospheric augmentation, filtering, and tracking.
Update: we were asked to submit the conference paper to the International Journal of Architectural Computing by the special issue editors. The reviews have just come back and 3 out of 4 said accept, the 4th said no. One criticism was that there was already huge literature on biofeedback and virtual/digital worlds. Apart from Cumincad, ACM digital library, IEEE Electronic library and DIGRA, are there any scholarly resources that I am missing? The paper was accepted anyway, but I am always happy to address my naivety 🙂
Hi Erik, Is this paper published anywhere? I am investigating biofeedback as part of a design studio at Princeton and would love to read it.
Yes at IJAC year: 2011 vol 9 no4.
The original paper is in the Cumincad libary.
A youtube demo video is on here on this blogsite.
CMU have done some work lately, and Coventry in Virtual heritage, also there have been papers by others at CHI and DiGRA conferences.
If you cannot find the IJAC paper via the link please email me directly.
Regards Erik