Thesis Proposal V1.0 Draft

WHAT IS YOUR THESIS QUESTION? (approx 2-3 sentences)

I hope to understand the relationship between personal breathing and time perception. And I wonder whether or how breathing can affect time perception, and help individuals adjust their own time awareness?

Check: Is it narrow enough that it can be answered/addressed given the available time and resources?

• However the problem of statement is not narrow enough yet.

What is the significance of the question?
In my opinion, breathing at one’s own pace; control of self-time perception is the basic ability to maintain the complete self and one of the foundations of humans to approach self-control and freedom.

However, living in busy first-tier cities or thrill-addiction-oriented online society and service, we tend to lose more awareness of time perception as well as our internal rhythm breathing, which can lead to more emotional problems or possibly social hatred. It is likely to get worse in the future because breath and time perception are invisible objects, hard to be conscious of.

Why does it matter and to whom?

Breathing and self-controlled time perception are important for everyone who wants to live a healthy and well-being life. This is especially true at a time when many of us face the emotional distress of being squeezed out of our personal time.

WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO MAKE? (approx 3-5 sentences)

• What form will your thesis project take?
  • The project Recovery aims to create a new space in urban life that modulates the perception of time, giving people breathing at their own pace and rethink the relationship between the system and the individual. It would be an interactive installation that welcomes one person or multiple people to experience breathing and time control simultaneously.
• How does what you plan to make address your Thesis Question?
  • These two topics are very abstract and broad, so I need to find a smaller entry point, such as whether it is for a special group of people, a behavior (common breathing). I need to find the intersection of time perception and breathing (and rhythm), and establish associations and mechanisms. And from different cultures, (time) history, future technologies, and theories, we have a deep understanding of these two concepts.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO YOU? (approx 3-5 sentences)

• Why do you want to do this?
  • My curiosity about time perception stems from a science fiction novel describing future work, which mentions how managers manipulate employees’ time perception, extend working hours and shorten the recovery time from psychological breakdowns, thereby maximizing profits. The control of time by the development of technology and capital may already be happening, and further manipulation of the collective rhythm in the future may be inevitable, and it is difficult for individuals to realize and resist.Breathing, the perception of the internal rhythm of the human body, is another unconscious and invisible behavior that can affect the brain’s senses. Therefore, I am curious about the relationship between the two topics and hope to design an interactive experience based on this, so that the invisible breathing and time perception can be realized and experienced.
• What is your passion behind this?
  • My enthusiasm comes from curiosity about unknown things, curiosity about human behavior, and psychology. Passion for science fiction and fear of losing control of time. I also look forward to learning these topics during this project to better regulate my breathing state and time perception.

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS WITH THIS PROJECT? (approx 3-5 sentences)

• What do you envision as the outcome of this project(dream/ultimate envision)?
  • This project is creating an urban interaction between people walking on the street.
    • 1.Easy to understand the interaction
      2.Two-way interaction, breathing and response.
      3. Resonate with audience, deeply understand the meaning of the relationship of time preception and breathe
      4. Have a memorable experiences, sharable interaction.
      Nice to have:
      Allow two people to interact at the same time.
• What do you hope will be the impact of this project?
  • People experience the relationship between breathing and time perception after experiencing this work, and even adjust the experience of time.
    • This interactive project aims to uncover an unseen part of life and bring it back to experience.Basic to have: After experiencing this work, people experience the relationship between breath and time perception, and even the experience of adjusting time.Nice to have: It shows how our neglected breath can help stressful people in big cities relax and how social support from others could bring joyful experiences and the possibility of reconstruction of collective rhythm.

INFLUENCES OR INSPIRATION? (approx 1-2 sentence description accompanying each link)

• #1 Project Time Waterfall-panel#MAM，Project Counter Skin on Faces |  LINK1, Link2
• 
• 
  • Why Relevance: visual communication of time.
    • I could feel the rhythm of life and life from the falling of numbers. The numbers on the face highlight the relationship between body and time, and control is controlled. This helped me think about how to express time perception through visual communication

• #2: Airtime |  LINK
• 
  • Why Relevance: Extension of time
    • This project offers the audiences the experience free-falling (even if just for a second). This way of shaping the sense of time extension gives me a good reference. The project uses a humorous way to make people think about a deep topic, which is what I need to learn.

• #3: PULSE OF THE CITY | LINK
• 
  • Why Relevance: Public art, self-awareness
    • This project is very related to one of the possible experience I hope to achieve. Through simple interaction and feedback mechanisms, it has shaped the buffer zone of urban life, allowing people to stop and listen to their own heartbeats and get the surprise of the city. In this way, the invisible personal rhythm is expressed, and self-consciousness is created through design intervention.

• #4: Breath with Me | LINK
• 
  • Why Relevance: Public art, healing, invisible breathing experience.
    • “ Life begins with an inhale and ends with an exhale. In-between we all breathe and live different lives. And yet, each breath keeps us together, connected, sharing the same air. ” ——Jeppe Hein
    • I was deeply moved by this project because it showed the invisible breathing, air sharing, and rhythm synchronization of a person and the group through simple interaction. What’s more,  It arouses my curiosity about breathing and I start to wonder about the relationship between two invisible items, time perception, and breathing.

• #5: INVISIBLE SCULPTURES | LINK

• 
  • Why Relevance: experience of invisible items.
    • This project is related to how to express the invisible items, trying to experience the shape through sound, heat, and smell. It make me rethink about The unique thing about this project is that it allows everyone to express their individual perceptions. Similarly, everyone’s perception of time is different. Do I need to consider this part of the design?

• #6: Into the wind | LINK
• 
  • Why Relevance: interaction of breathing
    • This program provides a way to initiate interaction through breathing, as well as it conveys a state of relaxation that is emotionally healing. This interaction can be an attractive experience that leads people to breathe.
• #7: Vaer i vejret | LINK
• 
  • Why Relevance:
    • Gasification, the feeling of natural breathing, it represent different physical form of air/breathing. Whether the gasified breath can become an expressive element of the project? Does it appear with people’s breathe?

• #8: Kinetic Sculpture | LINK
• 
• Why Relevance: Kinetic interaction
  • This project has a very comprehensive project process, which enables me to understand the production process and thinking process of dynamic sculpture. I was wondering if I could express the speed of time in this direct rotation of the disk.
• #9: Mobile Mobile | LINK
• 
  • Why Relevance: Group experience
    • It creates the interaction of two people at the same time, and the behavior of one person drives the occurrence of the other interaction. In my project, I might consider the same method of operation. When two people interact, could I build a connected experience for both of them?

• #10 In Search of Personalized Time | LINK
• 
• Why Relevance: Personalized time
  • By giving everyone a clock to record the present experience, people become more aware of their own time, rather than being affected by other people or external circumstances. As what the project introduction mentioned, “By reconfiguring the relation between time and space, your presence can take form elsewhere, or elsewhen, through another sense of time.”
  • First of all, the topic of this project is very related to my topic, discussing personalized time. LINK The most interesting part is let people to feel there feeling of a minutes, and the clock will keep time on the personal speed, perceptual minute!! I’m still thinking how the breath fits into the perception of time. Use the frequency of breathing to represent the time?
    Second, this kind of interaction is very novel to me, and I haven’t considered that collective interaction can be achieved through distributed tools and interactions.
  • This project also asked a very interesting question: If everyone’s time is different, can we create a bottom up approach to determining time, and what would be the democracy of time? We still don’t have answers to it, we just have few more leads since the time we started our project. And This question leads to a new concern a world of “Time synchronization & desynchrony”, which I don’t have answer yet.

Other Case study for strengthen imagination:

• #1 : The Body Clock | LINK
• 
  • Why Relevance:
    • How does the body itself become the clock of the self?
• #2 Tear Gun | LINK
• 
• Why Relevance:
  • Could I use the breath as a weapon to struggle against time-modulated? Can I find a better metaphor from this concept?
• #3: Breathing Clock | LINK
• 
  • Why Relevance:
    • This project reshape the awareness of time by identify breath as a new visible rhythm. That’s also one way to change time perception.

• Share links to any projects you have already done yourself that you intend to leverage and/or build upon?
  • This is the most related project that I’ve done, because both of thesis project and this one share the same emotions which is might leads to future emotional expression explore.
  • Time and space | LINK

HOW DO YOU ENVISION REALIZING THIS PROJECT? (max 150 words)

• What are the key steps necessary to make this project a reality?
  • Key Steps:1 the narrow down topic of breathing and time perception.2 the detailed variables I want to use3 Determine the interaction mechanism, experience style, and response/feedback outcome4 Design, Build mock, and test.
• Are there key benchmarks you will need to meet?
  • It attracts people’s attention actively.
  • It allows people to sense time as they experience it.
  • Breath-based content changes during the experience.
  • This breathing experience is considered novel and meaningful.
  • Nice to have: multi sensorial experience, such as synchronize sound changes.

• What techniques, tools, materials are you planning to use and why?
  • I could only assume that I might need things below since I don’t have a clear picture of the final outcome.
    • Sensor, (wearable) device, or microphones for detecting breath, or airspeed
    • LED lights on the metal panel, spray or screen/speaker, motor, for visual responses to create the time re-adjusting.
    • Visual content that is generated/responded to by real-time data. (P5)
    • The technique for capturing real-time data and making calculations and sending signals.

• Is there a community, space or audience you will need to access?
  • During research phase and design,
    • Experts who know about yoga meditation, group breathing exercises.Experts who know about psychology relate to time perception.
    • Experts who know a lot about sensorial experiences (especially in the field of physical interaction)

• What further research and/or skill-building will you need to do?
  • Research:
    • What’s the subtopic of breathing I want to explore?
    • What’s the relationship between breathing and time perception?
    • How breathing could change the awareness of time, and control time perception?
    • What’s the existing technology or predicted theory of time control?
    • What’s could be the metaphor of time, the system of control?
    • What’s the sensorial experience could look like?
    • What’s the limitation of outdoor/public interaction?
    • What’s the rhythm experience design?

• • Skill building
    • How to detect air or breathing and real-time data analysis.
    • What technology should be required to allow multiple people to play
    • Tech. around physical interaction or screen (visual or behavior interaction)

OPTIONAL QUESTIONS (approx 2-3 sentences each)

• WHAT ARE YOUR AREAS OF STRENGTH?
  • Awareness of spatial experience?
    
• WHAT AREAS DO YOU NEED TO WORK ON?
  • concept and expression
  • visual communication
  • story-telling interaction
  • tech-skill support the whole project
  • Focus and create contrasting experiences
• TECHNOLOGIES YOU WANT TO EXPLORE IN MORE DEPTH?
  • creative coding for visual communication
  • sensors, physical computing? thinking and making process for interaction design
    • (XeThru impulse radar)
      • https://dl-acm-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/doi/10.1145/3170427.3186473,
      • https://dl-acm-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/doi/pdf/10.1145/3170427.3186473
    • (Tangible / touch experience for breathing guide)
      • https://dl-acm-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/doi/10.1145/2971485.2996727