Vision typically dominates our behavior in public and establishes the basis of social relations. We rely on vision to assess identity: a quick glimpse of another person allows us to infer his or her sex, age, race, and social class. Under normal conditions, this visual assessment precedes any social interaction. Braincoat is an experiment on interpersonal communication within a space of compromised perception: vision is blurred by the fog, and hearing is dulled by the pervasive white noise of hissing water nozzles.
Braincoat does not rely on language, either spoken or written. Because Blur deprives visitors of the visual clues typically used to gauge the physical environment and the social relations within it, the braincoatโa prosthetic skin in the form of a raincoat with embedded technologiesโallows visitors to gain a sixth sense. Visual cuesโin the form of facial expressions, body language, blanching, and blushing, among other reactionsโhold great communicative power, particularly when conventional language fails.
Thus nonverbal expression suggests the potential for wearable technologies. What if wireless communications acquired the intelligence to transmit emotions, thoughts, personal attraction, aversion, and even embarrassment?
All visitors enter Blur at a log-in station located at the base of the entrance ramp. Each visitor completes a questionnaire while waiting in the entry queue. The answers are used to produce a unique profile that is added to a cumulative database. Each visitor is then issued a braincoat that includes an imprint of his or her profile, enabling the coats to communicate with one another.
The basis for this communication is the database, a data cloud that complements the fog cloud. The questionnaire is an integral part of the creative project and was conceived in collaboration with fiction writer Douglas Cooper. Although each visitor responds to only twenty questions, these are randomly culled from a set of several hundred questions. The braincoats have the capacity to display three types of response.
