“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once and a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller

Taking Bueller’s advice just got a little bit easier. The Decelerator Helmet alters the user’s perception of time by relaying their environment to them in slow motion. Designer Lorenz Potthast built the operational prototype for an Interactive Design course at the University of Art in Bremen, Germany. It uses a webcam and a computer loaded with a program written in vvvv to send slowed down images of the user’s surroundings to a head mounted display as well as a monitor on the outside of the helmet. Using a remote control, the user can choose between different speeds and whether and how quickly the perceived moment catches up with the actual moment.

On his Vimeo page, Potthast explains that the the Decelerator is an experimental way of dealing with our fact-paced, hectic society. “The Decelerator gives the user the possibility to reflect about the flow of time in general and about the relation between sensory perception, environment and corporality in particular. Also it dramatically visualizes how slowing down can potentially cause a loss of the present.”

We’re wondering what kind of effects it would have if one were to wear it to a Daft Punk concert.

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Michael Kolberg is The Sprawl Editor at Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter for jokes @mikeykolberg.

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