Playing with Yourself: How Electrical Muscle Stimulation Can Turn Your Body Into A Playful Interface

Abstract

Imagine a game where your body is both the controller and the game. Our work explores how body-actuating technologies, such as Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS), transform the body into a playful interface, bridging physical and virtual worlds. While digital bodily games typically rely on external displays – creating a disconnect between the player’s body and the virtual experience – we introduce the “Body as a Play Material” approach, where players loan control of their body to a computer via EMS. Building on the idea of self-competition, we designed three games in which players face off against their own EMS-actuated hand. In a seven-day study (n=12), players embraced loaning bodily control, enjoyed the ambiguity of computer-controlled movements, and were captivated by their hand’s involuntary motions. By turning the body into a playful interface, this work opens new possibilities for interactive play that blurs boundaries between physical embodiment and virtual engagement.

Authors

Rakesh Patibanda, Aryan Saini, Xiang Li, Yuzheng Chen, Elise van den Hoven, Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller

Keywords

Collaborators