More.
Better.
Faster.

In an increasingly hectic, overstimulated and restless environment the calls for deceleration are omnipresent. The inconceivably amount of information and influences in our everyday lives leads in many cases to an excessive demand.

The Decelerator Helmet offers an experimental approach to an essential subject of our globalized world. The technical reproducible senses are consigned to an apparatus which allows the user a perception of the world in slow motion. The float of time as apparently invariant constant is broken and subjected under the user’s control.

 

 

In the inside of the helmet the video-signal of a camera and the input of a microphone are processed by a small computer. The slowed down images are displayed right before the user’s eyes via a Head-Mounted Display and simultaneously shown at a monitor on the outside.

In three different modes the lapse of time can be influenced through a remote control: In the auto-mode time is slowed down automatically and re-accelerated after a defined interval. The press-mode allows the specific deceleration of time and in the scroll-mode the user can completely control the speed of the elapsing of time.

The idea to decouple the personal perception from the natural timing enables the user to become aware of his own relationship to time. The helmet works as a reflection-bubble to think about the flow of time in general and the relation between sensory perception, environment and corporality in particular.

 

 

The technique of the Decelerator extends the awareness of time and transforms the concept of present in a constructed, artificial state. On a different level the helmet dramatically visualizes how slowing down under all circumstances causes a loss of actuality and as an idea is inconsistent with its environment. It doesn´t help to change the speed of your perception of the environment, if the environment stays in the same time.

The helmet raises the general question how technology will shape our senses in the future. The project unintentionally explored how this shift to a personalized perception could change our view of the world and eventually will lead to an detachment of our global convention of reality.