Thank you for purchasing the Rodent Sense™ Virtual Reality expansion pack. Now you can have the sensory experience you’ve always wanted.
Rodent Sense by Sense co. - A speculative design project in collaboration with Alexis Hope and Felix Heibeck.
Inspired by the protagonist in Kill Decision’s reliance on a trained pair of ravens (as opposed to drones), and by the SimStim in Neuromancer that allows Case to tap into the sensory experience of another, the Rodent Sense project links its wearer to the world of animals.
We drew on Umwelt theory to imagine how a human might make sense of the world if given the opportunity to switch between various animal sensory inputs and augment (or diminish) their senses in particular ways. For the demo, we focused on allowing the viewer to see through the eyes of a hamster.
As hamsters can only see 2 inches in front of their eyes, the view offered to the wearer is quite a distorted one. To create this experience, we attached stereoscopic cameras to a carriage and hamster-ball device that the hamster pulled, and processed the resulting video feed so that it could be seen by the viewer in 3d while wearing an Oculus Rift. The carriage and wheels were lasercut from 5mm mirrored acrylic and 25mm clear acrylic. 2013
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