To Be Another

I was hopping around the Internet, when a certain headline jumped out at me: “What’s it like to see through the eyes of Another?” This was either going to be about some bizarre alien conspiracy or some very enticing science experiment. What I found was a project called “The Machine to be Another”, which was conducted by a Barcelona design collective. A team of artists, programmers, and engineers sought to experiment with empathy, perspective, and reality.

Typically in labs that explore empathy, subjects use computer avatars and answer questions while sitting in front of a screen. Video games are a common tool of simulation to study racial or gender bias. In the Be Another lab, however, there is a new method to create integrative approaches to expand our concept of reality.

Using two large goggle and earpieces mounted on the two subjects’ heads, the user’s brain is essentially tricked into seeing a 3-D, lifelike video of the other person’s perspective. The goggles record the view from one user and then feed those images and sounds to the headset of the partner. When the two subject sync their movements—by touching objects, looking around the room, and feeling their respective bodes—the subject gets the complete sensation of being in the other’s body.

The goggles were designed based off of the Oculus VR, which is a virtual reality headset originally designed for immersive video gaming. The headset uses tracking technology that allows for 360 degree viewing. Every movement that the goggles pick up gets tracked in real time, which allows for optimal viewing. The Oculus rift captures unique and parallel images for both eyes, which is similar to the way our eyes view the world. The headset mimics reality as closely as possible.

Here’s the scene: a man and woman stand opposite each other. They are both naked save for a headset that is connected to a monitor for third-party viewing. The woman will look at her hands and see hairy knuckles and a bulge in her pants. The man is quick to explore his newfound breasts. As long as the pair stays roughly in sync, the Machine To Be Another can cheat the brain and convince people that they have switched bodies.

This sounds like some sort of sci-fi version of 13 going on 30, but the Be Another Lab is focused on studying issue of race, gender, and physical disability. The most startling aspect of the experiment of the lab is how quickly the brain changes its understanding of reality. After years and years of living in the same body, in fewer than ten seconds your can brain forget your old physique and accept a completely new reality. That’s pretty cool. A relatively low budget art science experiment can make brains forget sex, physical build, and the sound of your own voice.

The brain displays astounding plasticity in its ability to pick up new languages, patterns, and ideas, but this seems to strike another level of impressive. The brain is so able to blur the boundaries between self and other. What has been such a foundational human belief—that we are ourselves and everyone else is someone else—is being put to trial by this type of experimentation. Indeed we are developing new tools to study human sympathy that can affect human sympathy.

Perhaps with gizmos like this becoming less experimental and more practical, we will be forced to accept the existence of other people on an entirely new level. We will be able to interact with someone else’s existence, either a stranger or a brother. The ultimate scope of this experiment is far from over. Technologies like this will continue to proliferate, and as they grow, our minds will need to expand with them.

By: David Ney