Inventions are often there to expand human capacities. As a car is a physical protease and improves transport speed and comfort a computer can be seen as a mental protease which speeds up calculations. Marshall McLuhan considers all media forms as expansions of the human senses and the global network as an extension of the nerve system. Our intention was to make the first little steps towards the emotional protease that could allow us to influence on our surroundings by means of affective input – a new way of non-reflected and unconscious decision making.
By putting their hands into the sensors of the installation emotions get measured by means of galvanic skin response. As a consequence the visitors get a personalised performance when watching the video flow by influencing on the character of image and sound, the order and the rhythm.
The user follows different branches of the non-linear structure and enters an emotional-technological dialog.
affectiveCinema is difficult to be categorised. It is somewhere in the field between art, game and science. There could be interesting comparisons made with people from a different cultural and social background as much as with people of different sex and age. The game part could further be developed by adding a point counting system to it, which honours emotional strength.
The idea of emotional navigation can be very close to inter-human communications, which include many more factors than the spoken language. The first production made with affectiveCienma could be interpreted as the encounter with someone strange, someone virtual or in fact as a meeting oneself. Because there are life takes of the visitors face included the frontiers between monitor and visitor get even blurrier.