functional description

• A whisper garment consists of a set of custom electronics integrated into a jacket, which gathers physiological signals and sends them to a central server. The central system constructs a model of the garments within the installation space and generates visual imagery and sounds corresponding to the measured body data signals.

• Each garment has a custom-engineered high-speed microcontroller that is connected to a number of sensors and connection points and provides data concentration services for the system.

• The wearers’ heart rate is determined via a photoplethysmograph - a simple device that is worn on the finger and detects changes in blood flow by reflecting infrared light on the skin.

• The wearers’ breath rate is measured using a stretchable chest band that is worn under the garment.

• The jacket contains a set of connection points: pairs of small conductive ‘snaps’ on each garment that uniquely identify both the garment and the point of contact ? contact is established by a garment wearer touching one of the islands on another garment. The participant wears another finger band containing a set of connection ‘snaps’ used to connect the participant to others. The purpose of connection is in order to share physiological data, which is projected in the ‘projection pools’ on the floor.

• There is also a small LED matrix located on the jacket sleeve, for local visual feedback to the wearer, to complement the visual and audible effects in the installation space. Each wearer has a unique ‘symbol’ that identifies them. This symbol is displayed on the jacket sleeve, and also identifies their data on the projected floor visualizations.

• The microcontroller uses a custom-designed local signal bus to gather the physiological data, which is then communicated to the central server via a short-range Bluetooth transceiver.

• The central server consists of several computers ? a data collector server that handles the Bluetooth communication with the garments, and multiple visualization servers that generate the visual and audible representations of the individual garment wearers’ states and of the aggregated states of the set of garments.

• The projection systems are specialized ‘pools’ of sound and image systems, projected onto the floor of the space. The projection systems generate focused experience spaces within the installation, so that the experiences can be keyed to the presence of a garment within the experience space. Each pool projects physiological data (heart and breath data) in real time, based on the connections of the participants.

• A participant ‘invites’ others data into their own pool through the act of connecting or ‘snapping’ onto another.