More about PersonalSoundtrack
Since the late 1950’s, when SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Environment) used people as band-aids for an imperfect computational system, our interaction with machines has been primarily focused on reinforcing the SAGE-style environment. We are forced to compensate and learn how to convince dumb machines to do what we want them to do. Only recently has the burden of interaction design been placed as much on the designers, programmers and engineers as on a system’s users. PersonalSoundtrack is an exercise in drastically altering these roles, allowing users to enter into a symbiotic relationship with a machine. The user’s actions influence the system’s dynamics as much as the machine’s actions do, and in this way each plays off the other continuously and simultaneously. The device’s intelligence has not changed; it’s still a rather dumb machine. Instead, the relationship between the user and the machine are different, and the system that unfolds is unique. This device adapts to its user, performing a task based upon embodied, natural, and situated movement. The person is asked only to walk as they always do.
If PersonalSoundtrack had been designed as most computational systems are, it would require its user to walk a certain way in order to function. We must continually wrap ourselves and our way of working and playing around machines, bending and contorting in an effort to use them. PersonalSoundtrack celebrates the differences in our walking styles, adapting to all and requiring very little in return. It turns the tables, so that the user simply does what he/she wants to do, and the machine bends and contorts itself around the user.
Greg Elliott
Interested in shaping the way design both dictates and allows for more effective interaction, my current focus is on creating systems that are functional and emotionally fulfilling, while simultaneously question the role of technological systems in society. Specifically, the way we value efficiency and optimization in computer devices has deeply impacted how we value our relationships with those systems and with other people / cultures. A musician and philosopher at heart, I enjoy returning to my roots by framing and exploring them in a software/hardware medium.
PersonalSoundtrack detects your pace and plays songs from your library that match your pace, in real-time. You simply put it on and begin moving; that’s it. This might be your first symbiotic relationship with a machine.
