Project Description:

Hydnum is an extended reality data-driven interactive installation that immerses the visitor in a transmodal continuum of scent, music, form, poetry, space, and light. This data-driven piece is based on research connecting virtual and physical elements to emotional affect and cross-sensory stimulus through human biodata. Hydnum extends James Russell's "Circumplex Model of Affect and Motivational State" into transmodal worldmaking in extended reality. 

Hydnum is a transmodal / symbiotic system consisting of a prototype medical scent delivery system, a cyber-physical artifact, an extended reality experience, and a generative audio component. The biodata visualizations also extend into the surrounding area by using projection mapping. The interactive spatial system can transmit scents based on the user's real-time psychophysiological measures (heart rate and heart rate variability data).

A modular system of tubes, 3D printed interfaces, and brackets emerges from the six scent modules of the BIOPAC scent delivery system and branches into the surrounding space. Our approach adopts the characteristics of a proliferating nonlinear network, often referred to as "Rhizome" after the Ancient Greek word "ῥίζωμα", "rhízōma".

Collaborators:

• transLAB, UCSB:

  • Marcos Novak (Director)

  • Iason Paterakis

  • Nefeli Manoudaki

  • Diarmid Flatley

  • Pau Roselló Diaz

• Biopac Systems:

  • Alan Macy

Exhibition History:

UCSB, Media Arts and Technology program - End of the Year Show - Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science, and Technology (SBCAST), California, Santa Barbara / June 2022

UCSB, Media Arts and Technology program - End of the Year Show - California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) Elings Hall, University of California Santa Barbara / May 2022