escape-chair

artificial immersive environments for often scared, very often in pain, temporarily demobilized people

Dan Melinger ( )

This project is being created as part of Live Image Processing and Performance, a class at ITP taught by R. Luke DuBois.

A practical application of image processing, the end result of the project will be hardware and software that integrates well with a dental exam room and allows a patient to interact with the system.

THEORY: When in the chair, patients feel somewhat powerless and at the whim of the doctor and her staff. Giving a patient something interesting to play with will ease the feeling of powerlessness. If the procedure is somehow integrated into the immersive environment, that's a plus.

HARDWARE / SOFTWARE:

• Controls integrated into dental chair
• Screen mounted above patient's head for easy viewing while leaning back
• Max/MSP Jitter for sound and image processing

CHALLENGES:

• Make user feel more comfortable, not any more nervous
• Integrate with existing chairs and exam room setups
• Make something that the doctor feels comfortable having in their environment

NEXT STEPS:

• HCI research
  • chairs
  • joystick-type controls
• Speak with dentists
• Software design
• Hardware design

Credit for the original inspiration for this project goes to Evan Raskob with whom I am collaborating on this project outside the scope of LIPP class.