Keywords:

Two people enter a Virtual Reality projection room. They are instrumented with heartbeat sensors. The participants face each other, speaking and touching as they interact. They hear music that is linked to their heartbeats, changing in harmony, rhythm and tone as heart rates rise and fall. They are surrounded by colorful virtual auras that move and change in response to the changing heart rates. They levitate above the virtual landscape and move to different regions as their interaction progresses,and the music shifts to different instrumentations and moods...

This is the 2Hearts Reactive Environment (2HRE). The primary motivation for developing the 2HRE is to explore a new paradigm for computer-assisted interpersonal interaction. By using heartbeat signals as control inputs to music and graphics, we create a system in which the participants must work together, and work through each other, to achieve a desired result. Each action towards the other participant will be filtered through that person's unique personality and cognitive responses before affecting his heartbeat - essentially each player becomes an instrument. Gaining skill at this instrument requires and promotes a high degree of intimacy between the participants.