tOURs

City Wander has become a popular hobby in recent years. People enjoy exploring the city by walking, it is a hobby to relax oneself, and to discover new treasure of the city and one’s life. In this research, I designed a City Wander recording and sharing service with wearable devices, which visualizes the heartbeat information on a map to show the relationship between human body and urban landscape, so that we can realize the embodiment of urban landscape. I firstly hypothesized that one’s heart rate rises when he or she sees something he or she is curious about, and then test this using my first prototype device. I conducted an experiment with four participants, in popular City Wander areas such as Akihabara and Asakusa area in Tokyo. The data suggests that heart rate is significantly higher when participants see what they consider an interesting spot when compared with spots they are indifferent towards, implying that my concept is supported by quantitative physiological data responses. With the second prototype, which is a new kind of Instagram Service, I had a deeper study on the relationship between urban landscape and human emotion, and also to show the actual scenario possibilities of this research. Perspectives of this research direction are discussed in terms of the relationship between city and human body and even the emotion.