Sonic Cradle sus­pends the body is a com­pletely dark cham­ber which encour­ages expe­ri­ences com­pa­ra­ble to mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion.  Users com­pose peace­ful sound­scapes in real-time using only their breathing.

Sonic Cradle is a relax­ing human-computer inter­ac­tion par­a­digm designed to foster med­i­ta­tive atten­tional pat­terns.  The cur­rent pro­to­type is a dark­ened cham­ber which sus­pends indi­vid­u­als in a com­fort­able ham­mock while they pro­gres­sively con­trol sound through their own res­pi­ra­tion.  15 co-design ses­sions resulted in sev­eral tweaks and improve­ments aimed at bal­anc­ing users’ per­ceived sense of control.

A mixed meth­ods inves­ti­ga­tion of the iter­ated pro­to­type with a pur­po­sive sample of 39 par­tic­i­pants demon­strated how Sonic Cradle can pleas­antly encour­age mind­ful expe­ri­ences by con­sis­tently induc­ing a calm mental clar­ity and loss of inten­tion.  Surprisingly, par­tic­i­pants also reported per­cep­tual illu­sions, feel­ings of float­ing, and emo­tional responses.  This project breaks new ground toward ful­fill­ing technology’s poten­tial to expe­ri­en­tially per­suade people to adopt and psy­cho­log­i­cally ben­e­fit from con­tem­pla­tive prac­tices like mind­ful­ness meditation.

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» Listen to sound record­ings of the Sonic Cradle in use

» Watch a video demo of the Sonic Cradle artifact

» Learn more about the cross-disciplinary “immer­sion” frame­work which under­lies the Sonic Cradle con­cept

Press Coverage

“…[the] idea that music might be a way into med­i­ta­tive states led to asking ques­tions about whether meld­ing music, breath­ing tech­nique and com­puter tech­nol­ogy could open the door to non-meditators.” CBC/Radio-Canada (French Version)

“Sonic Cradle… rep­re­sents … a sort of tonic to the stress which many people feel the ubiq­uity of tech­nol­ogy induces in soci­ety.” PSFK

“[Sonic Cradle] is a med­i­ta­tive biofeed­back system… which essen­tially enhances the med­i­ta­tive expe­ri­ence to such a degree that begin­ners claim to be able to have out-of-body expe­ri­ences.” Portfolio (Conde Nast)

“[Sonic Cradle] is a machine that uses breath­ing pat­terns to create immer­sive sound­scapes — and then feed them straight back into your brain to create an tex­tured, infi­nite loop of bliss.” Motherboard.TV (Vice) (2)

“An SFU grad stu­dent project that melds music, med­i­ta­tion and tech­nol­ogy landed a rare spot as an exhibit at TEDActive 2012 in Palm Springs” SFU.ca

“In his master’s research project, Jay Vidyarthi asks, para­dox­i­cally, ‘Can tech­nol­ogy be used to free us from the stress asso­ci­ated with infor­ma­tion over­load?’” SFU Graduate Studies Blog

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