The Decelerator Helmet offers an experimental approach to an essential subject of our globalized world. It is a experimental approach for thinking about our increasingly fast moving, globalized society. The technical reproducible senses are consigned to an apparatus which allows the user a perception of the world in slow motion. The float of time as apparently invariant constant is broken and subjected under the user’s control.
In the inside of the helmet the video-signal of a camera and the input of a microphone are processed by a small computer. The slowed down images are displayed right before the user’s eyes via a Head-Mounted Display and simultaneously shown at a monitor on the outside. In three different modes the lapse of time can be influenced through a remote control. The idea to decouple the personal perception from the natural timing enables the user to become aware of his own relationship to time. The helmet works as a reflection-bubble to think about the flow of time in general and the relation between sensory perception, environment and corporality in particular.
The project was supervised by Prof. Tanja Diezmann, University of the Arts, Bremen.
And yes, Lorenz will bring the Decelerator Helmet to the event for everybody to try it out!