Arturo Vidich
Eric Mika
Sofy Yuditskaya

Mental Block

The faces of brain-reading headset wearers come in and out of focus based on the relative alignment of their brainwaves.

http://mentalblock.net

Classes
Introduction to Physical Computing


The faces of others are selectively revealed to you based on how similar your brain waves are to theirs. If you and another person are on the same wavelength, the visual path between the two of you will be clear — but if you are on different wavelengths, faces will be obscured.

The system works by rotating a clear polarized disk suspended in front of the wearer's face. The angle of the disk is determined by each wearer's brain waves. When your disk is parallel to another person's, light passes through both disks freely. But when the disks are at different angles, the light is blocked.

We've started off by building two of the headsets, but the system is designed to scale to any number of users, growing the number of potential connections quadratically.

User Scenario
Two users don headsets and gaze at each other through a rotating polarized lens filter. They will notice they can see the whole room except for the other one's face. The users will be informed that they can only see each other if they get on the same wavelength, either meditative or attentive.