The Distant Heart : Call for Participants

" Distance never separates two hearts that really care..."

The Distant Heart is a research that looks into rectifying the emotional void created when families, friends and loved ones move away from each other. We are specifically interested in the implications of revealing and sharing real-time heartbeat between two people who are far away and miss each other. 

As part of our research, we are creating a series of computational necklaces. The necklaces would wirelessly receive real-time heartbeat data from a paired device, and interpret it into the affective expressions, embedded into the necklace. Several of these Distant Heart necklaces will be demonstrated at the V&A Digital Design Weekend. But if you are curious about what it actually feels like to share heartbeats with someone you love, you can wear one of the necklaces for a day in London between August 5 & 17. 

The criteria for trying on the Distant Heart necklace is simple: you and your loved one must be at least 18 years of age and need to be away from each other for at least 6 hours during the time when you have the necklace on. We can deliver the necklace to you in the morning along with instruction, and will pick it up at the end of the day. We will then ask you to fill in a short anonymous questionnaire, describing your experiences. The full details are here.

You can register your interest and the days that you would like to try the necklace through doodle at http://doodle.com/df6f7vuztgzmmqyn , or simply e-mail me at yulia.silina.linkedin @ gmail.com.

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Collaborators: Victoria & Alberts museum and Media & Arts Technology Centre at Queen Mary University of London