According to research published on the National Library of Medicine portal under the title of “The Temperature of emotions”, there is a close correlation between emotions and temperature through embodied processes. We can see evidence of this in the way we tend to describe emotions through the language of temperature. Feeling warm or heartwarming is often associated with happiness and the feeling of being content. Being cold with someone or chilled with fear on the other hand often has negative connotations. Emotional temperature is implicitly and explicitly seen in many aspects of our life. This research went into the subtilities of these findings to understand how emotions and temperature are related cognitively. The research on this concept is still scarce but they found out that the region of hypothalamus in our brain which is responsible for maintaining the body’s internal balance does so by regulating temperature, through a process of homeostasis. Emotions are homeostasis responses to maintain our body’s internal balance.
Further,” the theory of constructed emotions suggests that emotions are categorizations of past experiences molded by embodied knowledge. Emotions do not come from specific brain structures, rather the brain creates them as concepts by parsing sensory information, affect and physiological changes.” The brain triggers these responses depending on the way different sensory inputs and physiological processes are interpreted which is closely tied to the process of homeostasis.
For my project I created a temperature change visualizer using physical computing. There is a DHT11 Temperature and Humidity sensor attached to a 8x8 dot matrix. I wanted the device to be able to sense a change in temperature when a person holds the sensor in their hand. The device simultaneously shows a color visualization of the measured temperature. The temperature is reflective of the heat index (saturation and hue) of the colour and the humidity gives us the alpha or blur of the colours. This was a project built to visualize the concept of the temperature of emotions. Colours are a means of reflecting these emotions in the device.
This project came with a lot of challenges in terms of the compatibility of the DHT11 temperature sensor with the LED matrix. I studied many different temperature sensors and got a sense of how they worked by the end of it. The DHT11 Temperature and Humidity sensor features a temperature and humidity sensor complex with a calibrated digital signal output.
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