Widespread use of affective sensing in healthcare applications has been limited due to several practical factors, such as lack of comfortable wearable sensors, lack of wireless standards, and lack of low-power affordable hardware. In this paper, we present a new low-cost, low-power wireless sensor platform implemented using the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless standard, and describe the design of compact wearable sensors for long-term measurement of electrodermal activity, temperature, motor activity, and photoplethysmography. We also illustrate the use of this new technology for continuous long-term monitoring of autonomic nervous system and motion data from active infants, children, and adults. We describe several new applications enabled by this system, discuss two specific wearable designs for the wrist and foot, and present sample data.

Three factors involved in cognition - the individual, the collective, and the objective reality - are related and investigated through the safe facilitation offered by Wearable Body Organs. Each device is adaptable to its current user and the community it is active in, made by the person and community, becoming another plane of experience. We return to a body based knowledge and communication, and simultaneously breech our once assumed body boundaries.

Blendie is an interactive, sensitive, intelligent, voice controlled blender with a mind of its own. Materials are a 1950's Osterizer blender altered with custom made hardware and software for sound analysis and motor control. People induce the blender to spin by sounding the sounds of its motor in action. If they make their voice sufficiently blender-like, then Blendie will begin to pitch-track and power-match their voice with its own motor body. For example, a person may growl low pitch blender-like sounds to get it to spin slowly, and the person may growl blenderstyle at higher pitches to speed up Blendie. The experience for the participant is to speak the language of the machine, to resonate with the machine, and thus to more deeply understand and connect with it. The action may also bring about personal revelations in the participant, because in sounding with the blender one is likely to perform gesture and sound expressions not previously accessed which may open up unfound emotions or thoughts or feelings. An empathic opportunity is made manifest emphasizing and utilizing the aspects of motorized machines that are not what have been traditionally designed into them intentionally - i.e. their incredible sound and vibration - but that nevertheless have large roles in our interaction and approach to them. http://web.media.mit.edu/~monster/blendie.

A multi-user, polyphonic sensor stage environment that maps position and gestures of up to four performers to the pitch and articulation of distinct notes is presented. The design seeks to provide multiple players on a stage with the feeling of a traditional acoustic instrument by giving them complete control over the instrument's expressive parameters and a clear causal connection between their actions and the resulting sound. The positions of the performers are determined by a custom ultrasonic tracking system, while hand motions are measured by custom-made gloves containing accelerometer units. Furthermore, juggling clubs are illuminated dynamically to make complex juggling patterns more apparent. The system is currently on tour with the Flying Karamazov Brothers juggling troupe.