sweatatoms: materialising physical activity
TRANSCRIPT
SweatAtoms: Materializing
Physical Activity
Rohit ashok khot, Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller, Larissa Hjorth
Exertion Games Lab, RMIT University, Australia
About me and my lab
Exertion Games LabRMIT University, Melbourne, Australiahttp://exertiongameslab.org
Physical – Digital - Physical
“To discover new ways of creating material artifacts through technology that embody self and past activities.”
1. Physical activity
2. Personal Informatics
3. Personal Fabrication
The problem of representation
“Physical activity data has no natural counterpart that can be graphically reproduced.”- Vande Moere (2008)
Representation 2: Flower
Dynamic floral pattern reflects the variations in heart rate while length of petal denotes the intensity of heart beat.
Representation 4: Dice
Each face of the die reflects the amount of time spent in each of the six heart rate zones.
Representation 5: Ring
Bubbles around the ring denotes the number of active hours and diameter of the bubbles defines the amount of physical activity during that hour.
Exploratory “in the wild” study
“Understand the impact of material artifacts on the behavior and experience of everyday physical activity.”
Engaging with the process
“great to see objects printing small big.. Like a recap of my physical activity...”
Engaging with artifacts
“We love the frog...it is like... Burning your body fats and putting them on the frog.”
Relating to physical activity
“My trainer was so happy to see my progress, thanks for letting me participate.”
Contrasting digital with material
“[on a mobile phone] you look at your heart rate and then forget about it, here [addressing to material artifact] you cannot, it is more persistent and personal.”
Physical – Digital - Physical
“Giving a physical form to the ephemeral experience of physical activity can facilitate a deeper engagement with the data.”