The Breathe Table - Visceral Interaction

Now why is that girl so excitingly staring at a few blurry blobs on a flat screen? Is it because these blobs are connected to her breath... What? Yes that is right, you are looking at the breathe table.The project examines breathing as a means of intimate communication. Our breathe takes the form of a coffee table across which two participants converse via patterns of light and color. The blue blobs are connected to the girls' breath and the red dots are connected to the breath of the person on the other side of the table.

The breathe table is one of the demonstrators in Qusai Kathawala's Visceral Interaction Master graduation project at Art Center Media Design Program.

According to designer Qusai Kathawala, "Visceral Interaction is a tactical approach to interaction design that aims at developing self-awareness and empathy. Grounded in a practice-based understanding of the body, it leverages media's social, psychological and physical potential to connect us with our environment, the people around us and ourselves."Whereas most media extend external parts of our body (a car as extension of legs, television as an extension of our eyes), the breathing table extends an internal bodily process.