14/03/2011

A pioneering new technology promises to hardwire audiences in emotionally, to the extent that they can influence the content they are watching. Biosuite, developed by Belfast-based production company Filmtrip, San Francisco-based technology company BioControl Systems, and the Sonic Arts Research Center (SARC) at Queen’s University Belfast, was trialled at the South by Southwest festival in Austin on March 13 and will be followed by screenings at SARC’s Sonic Laboratory as part of the Belfast Film Festival on April 10-12.

The film screened is Unsound, a horror short produced by Filmtrip for the new medium of Emotional Response Cinema. Biosuite uses hand sensors connected to the audience to measure heart rate and skin response. The resulting signals are sent to the Biosuite system to determine the audiovisual experience. This manifests itself by varying the scene selection, music score and sound effects.

Gawain Morrison, producer at Filmtrip Ltd, said, “We wanted to use Filmtrip’s expertise in creating deeper levels of audience experience to extend the reach of emotional response technology into visual media. It’s been an enlightening journey so far. By creating a film to test Biosuite, we have found ourselves exposed to a whole new world of possible future applications in this new field of technology.”

Dr Ben Knapp of BioControl Systems, said, “The next generation of digital media interaction will use a direct emotional interface as the key new channel of communication. The fundamental business opportunity is to capitalize on this requirement for new media interfaces by providing an entirely new and different mode of interaction - individual and group emotional state controlling the content narrative.”