If you are forced to spend long periods apart from your partner, and are starting to find phone calls, email, texting and Skyping too impersonal, a new kind of technology could help rekindle your romance.
Designed for use in an intimate bedroom setting, Mutsugoto is a new way of communicating with your long-distance lover by allowing your body to become a human canvas. In fact, its creators claim the installation is virtually as good as having your partner in bed with you.
While lying in bed, separated from each other by hundreds of miles, couples wear rings which are activated by touch, and which can be seen by a motion-sensitive camera set up above them. A computer vision system can follow the track of one ring as one partner runs it over their body or bed, projecting virtual pen strokes on their body. Simultaneously, these movements are projected in beams of light on the other partner. If the lines cross, they react with each other and change colour. The intensity of the stroke of light indicates the pressure of the virtual touch.
Mutsugoto aims to give partners the same emotional satisfaction as real physical touch. To enhance the overall romantic experience of this way of communicating, a special range of curtains and bed linen has been designed to go with the device.
The tool has been in development for the last couple of years, and is the brainchild of Tomoko Hayashi, Stefan Agamanolis and Matthew Karau, working for Scottish-based creative research organisation called Distance Lab.
The installation is already receiving plenty of attention, and has been shown at several global exhibitions in London, Japan and Singapore.
Mutsugoto has also garnered a £5000 Alt-w Production Award, administered by managed by New Media Scotland (New Media Scotland)and funded by Scottish Screen and the Scottish Arts Council towards the end of last year.
Now Distance Lab is now choosing three couples to take part in the first trials of Mutsugoto this summer. The installation is touring in a satellite bedroom, whose first public outing will be at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow’s Sauciehall Street in early July.
And don’t worry if the love turns sour, or the pressure of distance from your partner finally becomes too much – a remote fighting device is in the pipeline for warring couples.
Image: flygraphix/flickr
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