“XRAYHEAD” by Imai, Kayano and Kodaka
Conference:
Experience Type(s):
Title:
- XRAYHEAD
Presenter(s):
Description:
XRAYHEAD creates the striking illusion of seeing a skeleton inside one’s head when the experimenter touches the interior skeleton. This illusion is tested in a dark room using a setup in which the participant views a specially designed smart skeleton through a half mirror, and the experimenter touches the participant and the skeleton’s head with both hands. In this specific arrangement, the distance between the skeleton head and the palm of the experimenter’s hand determines how the light intensity of the LED embedded in the skeleton head increases. Alternatively, the whole part of the participant’s head is kept illuminated. Additionally, to enhance illusory tactile sensation to one’s skeleton, an auditory stimulus is supplied through a speaker or a bone-conduction headphone and/or modulated in sync with the degree of translucence. This creates the illusion of a head with a clearly viewed skeleton inside its translucent surface, allowing the physical touch to the skeleton’s surface. This technology was tested in our laboratory exhibition, and 77 of 101 participants reported a strong tactile sensation to the illusory skeleton inside their heads.
References:
[1] Christoph Bichlmeier, Felix Wimmer, Sandro Michael Heining, and Nassir Navab. 2007. Contextual anatomic mimesis: Hybrid in-situ visualization method for improving multi-sensory depth perception in medical augmented reality. 2007 6th IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, ISMAR (2007). https://doi.org/10.1109/ISMAR.2007.4538837
[2] Arvid Guterstam, Giovanni Gentile, and H. Henrik Ehrsson. 2013. The invisible hand illusion: Multisensory integration leads to the embodiment of a discrete volume of empty space. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 25, 7 (2013), 1078–1099.
[3] Kento Imai and Kenri Kodaka. 2020. XRAYSCOPE. Best Illusion of the Year Contest 2020(2020). http://illusionoftheyear.com/cat/top-10-finalists/2020/
