Gadgetory

I'm Erin suppose with the verge but for half an hour I was someone else I was a woman I was a stranger I stared down at the clay mask I heard him her hands struggling to comprehend how those hands which would clearly not mine were allowing me to feel its curves and cracks as I glanced at the mirror in front of me my new lip piercing glimmered under a harsh fluorescent lights this is not a video game this was the machine to be another we're always finding new ways to connect with one another email and text messages Twitter and Facebook Instagram and whatsapp and with every passing year keeping in contact with friends near and far becomes easier the concept of telepresence of virtually being somewhere that you're not it's been the driving force behind this march of progress surgeon can perform operations remotely business deals are hammered out opposite sides of oceans and millions of us use Skype and other services every day to be my faces across the world however this presence is generally a one dimensional experience remote interaction for the most part there's limited the sight and sound or dream of true telephony still eludes us I visited Fab Lab in Barcelona a small scale workshop offering tools and teachings in the areas of architecture engineering and computer aided design the specific team I met be another lab focused on experiential telephones demos that promote empathy Parliament's and self-understanding by showing you the world from another person's perspective the experiment I tried is called the machine to be a mother and it's disorienting after being carefully positioned I close my eyes and listen to a voice paid for a pair of headphones my voice was Norma a 29 year old anthropologist from Germany who's wearing a camera hooked up to my head as I opened my eyes I was staring at the same room but from a different perspective my hands look like Norma's but they still appear to obey my every command one of the artists from being La Follette approached me and shook Norma's hand and I felt her the experiment continued as a series of objects which wore it out for each of us first a mask then a cigarette tin and then finally America I could feel each object with my own hands while seeing it through Norma's perspective as I inspected each object I started to believe what I was seeing with reality Norma's voice was still being piped into my head but with a constant sentry bombardment I had no time to think and her voice became my stream of consciousness the demo finally ended with me standing face to face with myself shaking hands through simple means the machine to be another shows what I might be like however be another live stream isn't telecommuting or robotics or anything like that this was to make us understand and care about one another the another lab has investigated the issue of identity and perspective of a massively popular experimental gender swap which as the name suggests lets male and female participants what buddies but also empower people to do things that would otherwise be impossible like connecting a disabled ballerina with a surrogate dancer who expressed their dance outside the confines of a wheelchair the team is constantly looking for new collaborators from both the art and science fields and it believes a little empathy and understanding would be enough to truly change the world the experiments unofficial motto sums up be another labs ambitions perfectly you could better understand each other could you better understand yourself if you could see the world for the eyes of the other could it make a better world to live in