This notion page is where I keep my progress regarding research and access, HERE

Interview with BeAnotherLab(Marte):

——————————————————-

Questions&Answers(Paraphrased):

  1. What changes when we can be placed as the first person perspective via VR?
    1. empathy is all about perspective shifting. There’s something about seeing yourselves presented via someone elses’ image.
  2. Could you talk more about the body transfer illusion? What about it made it so believable to the user?
    1. （It didn’t matter, if the «new body» was of a digital avatar or of a plastic mannequin. Neuroscientists call this phenomenon the Body Transfer Illusion (or the Full Body Ownership Illusion.）
    2. Even though the experience is stationary, when people see themselves as someone else, they believe in this body transfer illusion unconsciously. Justly like when you see an image of your hand being presented and a knife falls down to cut on it, even if you know that it’s not really your hand, you still make this dodging movement unconsciously. It’s very similar to that.
  3. What are the major technical difficulties when doing this or going forward?
    1. The body swapping experience has to be operated with two users and two mediators. When one user moves a part of his or her body, the other person has to do the same in order to have that synchronization. So it’s still very passive and you cannot move around freely, but still it’s very immersive to be able to see yourselves embodied as someone else.
  4. Under what context has filmmakers/storyteller utilized the technologies in the past? How did they interact with the Machine?
    1. Usually it’s very hard to maintain that connection in the long term. It’s very difficult to keep the funding going. The technology itself is pretty easy to set up in fact, if you could come to our Barcelona office as a research resident or something, we can probably lend you some of our devices and machines. If there are enough people at NYU who are interested we can also have an educational workshop at NYU. The set up is really low budget and easy, you can probably figure it out yourselves.

After talking with Marte, he said he’ll think about what kind of resources BeAnotherLab can offer and keep me updated.

On my side, with all these info gathered, I need to think deeper into if this is the right kind of technology that will benefit my project.

Keep thinking, keep iterating…….