Kai Kunze

A research concept from 2016 might be in the spotlight in the next years, as described and discussed in the Dagstuhl Seminar “Eyewear Computing – Augmenting the Human with Head-mounted Wearable Assistants”.

Frisson is a feeling as well as an experience of physical reactions such as shivers, tingling skin, and goosebumps. In this work, we propose Frisson Waves, an exploratory real-time system to detect, trigger and share frisson in a wave-like pattern over audience members during music performances. The system consists of a physiological sensing wristband for detecting frisson and a thermo-haptic neckband for inducing frisson.

Very happy to be invited as one of the panelists presenting in a three-day online symposium on Liveness organised by the Neurolive EU Project. The symposium brings together artists, humanities scholars and cognitive neuroscientists to explore how liveness is conceptualised, measured and practiced across the arts and the sciences.

I’m speaking on the 24th, here’s the abstract of my talk and my slides (carefull ~17 Mb pdf)

Abstract: In my research, I combine design and technology to augment human senses, looking for novel interaction paradigms. Engineering and computing have often been used to mimic or surpass some human abilities (for example autonomous driving, playing Go). Such efforts appear to put humans and computers in a competitive relationship, as emphasized in AI vs. Human game competitions. Once fantastic fear of AIs “replacing” human workers is now taken much more seriously and discussed in the public sphere. My research proposes a different approach to the human-computer relationship by applying a cooperative and empowering framework, using wearable computing to actively augment human capabilities.

The role of the audience in stage performances is changing from passive spectators to contributors making the performance interactive by using different techniques. In this talk, we investigate the connection of audience physiological data to the experienced performance in three performance events with a total of 98 participants. We identified memorable performance moments by assessing, Electrodermal Activity (EDA) showing that the audience’s responses match the choreographer’s intention. Through Heart Rate Variability (HRV) features related to parasympathetic activity, we identified dramatic shifts that are connected to the choreographic development of the performance. Our results show how the audience’s physiological responses are linked to the choreographic development of the performance. Based on the findings, we contribute a discussion of the registered physiological phenomena and implications of the audience’s responses analysis to performance and choreography design in general. Furthermore, we walk through the dataset collected from the performance events.

On 16-17 March 2020, we co-organized the Augmented Humans conference in Kaiserslautern.. Due to the circumstances related to COVID-19, we moved to a fully virtual event and cancelled the physical event on 13th March. The whole team was struggling and especially thanks to all of the chairs it came together quite well.

On Sunday, just we met (only 2 people, disinfection materials, social distancing and mask wearing in place) to pre-record Stelarc’s Keynote

On the 9th August I had the opportunity to take part in a Miraikan Science Quest. It’s an open event at Miraikan, the Science Museum in Tokyo, to encourage a dialog between the public and researchers. This Science Quest was a premier, as it was the first ever held in English ;)

I’m excited and happy to be one of few non-Japanese researchers to receive a JST Presto (Sakigake) project grant, on the Topic Open Collective Eyewear.

It’s a strange feeling to have UbiComp and ISWC so close to my home. Amazing organization and impressive research and meeting old friends.

back @ this year’s CHI 2016. We just have 3 Late Breaking Work submissions accepted and it seems they are currently for free download at the ACM website