Hula Hooper Reference System

This prototype is based on videos where hula hoopers attach small cameras to their hula hoops, which enables them to take video of them hula hooping from the perspective of the hoop. This seemed like an interesting phenomenon to explore in an exhibit; basically, I asked myself, "how might I put people in the hula hoop's shoes?" It's also based on an interesting physical concept, the idea of a frame of reference. The basic idea is that your perception of motion depends on your point-of-view in relation to other objects. So, if you are looking from the perspective of something attached to the hula hoop, you perceive the human body as moving around inside the hoop; by contrast, if you're looking from the person's perspective, you perceive the hoop moving around you.

The prototype itself is a mini-scale model of what I imagine the actual interaction to be. A person would step inside a hoop that's set up to rotate around them, mimicking the motion of a real hula hoop. Additionally, the platform on which the person is standing can rotate in relation to the hula hoop. So, third-party observers would be able to see what it looks like for someone to hula hoop, but also what a hula hooping person would look like from the hoop's perspective.

The best way to improve this prototype would be to scale it up to full size. Also, the model I built isn't quite perfect with respect to how the hula hoop moves around the person-- there does need to be an additional degree of freedom that isn't represented in how it currently rotates. This limitation happened because I attached the wire-person and the hoop to the same base, so it could be easily overcome by separating them.