Poking. Besides the oft-derided Facebook functionality, and schoolyard flirting, what else is it good for? It’s just an antiquated and quite rude form of communication, if you ask us(Which you did, since you are reading this right now. Poke.) But what if the hallowed poke could be actually be, well, useful? Wouldn’t that be something that would get you to ram your pointer finger into the chest of the person sitting next to you? Of course it would.
Introducing Touchy, the device that uses poking to turn anybody into a human camera. Created by Hong Kong new media artist Eric Siu, Touchy is a device that is worn like a helmet and shaped like an old school camera. The helmet is attached to a small bulb. When passersby give this bulb an extended poke, it automatically takes a photo from the wearer’s perspective. It’s like the retro Polaroid version of Google Glass.
There are some bells and whistles, however. After the photo is taken, the image can be viewed on the helmet’s rear-mounted 3.5-inch LCD screen. Also, when the photo is being taken, the inside of the helmet lights up, thus displaying the eyeballs of the wearer in a creepy fashion. All in all, sort of a gimmicky yet cool feature.
Touchy was put together using an Arduino microcontroller, several other components and a whole lot of engineering know how. Eric Siu has not announced if and when this would enter the commercial sphere, so for now we’ll all have to remain sated by this video of the helmet in action. There there. Facebook’s poke is still around.
