empathizer

Linking brain and robot
2000

The installation “empathizer” offers the opportunity to experience an extreme human-machine connection. The laboratory-like installation consists of two articulated robots and a brain interface that visitors can use to connect with the machines.

empathizer (2000) In the experimental environment, brain voltages are measured on both halves of the head, analyzed and the data is fed to the robot controller - an interaction without physical action. The patterns of the brain signals are projected onto the robots, which reproduce the brain data through ever new, individual movements. The continuous flow of data to the robots creates a consciously changeable, but always changing, never recurring choreography. Through the direct linking of thought processes and mechanical devices, mental states are represented in physical space and have an effect on the interactors.

The possibility of interaction between a person's brain and the robots allows both the machine to become the person's extended body and the person and their brain to become the extended control of the machines. How is this hybrid encounter experienced? Do the users feel that their bodies have been extended by the robots? Or do they feel uneasy about the intrusion of technology into their mental activities?

With “empathizer”, the concept of the “user” is questioned more than usual. The installation makes it possible to experience the utopia of a future in which robots participate autonomously in public life or become an extension of the human body. The audience is confronted with the euphoria or fears of a society whose scientific and technological progress is increasingly changing human identity.

EEG technology: Günter Haffelder Collaboration software development: Christian Drumm