- Echolocalizator
Echolocalizator (2015) is a wearable device that aims to change or augment our human way of interacting with the environment. Using "sound spatialization," this technological helmet simulates the echolocation sonar used by animals like bats and dolphins, highlighting the essential role of technology in the coevolution of humans and animals.
Echolocalizator is, in fact, a perception-bending, environment-transforming portal to a world that simultaneously exists and does not exist. The work proposes a "virtualized reality" where visible phenomena are reinterpreted into synthesized sounds that generate new cognitive associations and perceptive experiences.
The helmet is a cybernetic hybrid computer that recreates physical reality within a biofeedback system and executes a computer algorithm in real time, translating sensory stimuli into a new language for human interpretation. Using ultrasonic sensors placed to the left and right of the forehead and a microcontroller that translates incoming signals into centimeters, this leather wearable device is able to produce a binaural sound atmosphere created in the mind of the user with sounds that correspond to their movements and the positions of objects in their vicinity.
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Supplementary Material
Echolocalizator 2017 click here.
A user wearing the Echolocalizator. It was fabricated in Manizales, Colombia in 2015 during the annual “Design and Creation” residence, as part of the Image Festival. The helmet is made with 100% cow leather and electronics, including ultrasonic sensors, a battery, microcontrollers and headphones. Image © 2015, Hamilton Mestizo. Model: Teresa Moran. librepensante.org.
http://librepensante.org/
Hamilton Mestizo earned a degree in fine arts in 2006 in Bogotá, Colombia. His work primarily explores the interfaces of science and technology and their critical, ecological, and sociopolitical implications. In the last decade, Mestizo has combined his artistic practice with education and research focused on hardware development, DIY-DIWO culture, and biotechnology. Mestizo has participated in several exhibitions and festivals around the world, including Interactivos? at the Medialab-Prado, ISEA, Pixelache Festival, Balance-Unbalance, and GOSH (Gathering of Open Science Hardware).
Acknowledgment
Echolocalizator was a collaborative effort that began in 2015 at the Festival de la Imagen in Manizales, Colombia, and continued in the design laboratories of the University of Caldas. [End Page 424]