In this world, people sense things. They might rely on their senses, but since their scope may be limited (and also infinite), there are also devices that can be used for this same purpose. We call them sensors.
Sensors are special because they enhance perception and let us see the beyond our limitations. They extend our senses.
Becoming extrasensorial or (as it is called in English) psychic or clairvoyant.
Interestingly, this clairvoyancy also has practical implications. For instance, a radioactive sensor with spectral analysis can tell us the age of an artefact. An fractal HRV sensor can tell us whether our body is in an adaptive or recovering state during sleep. A brainwave sensor can tell us what frequency we’re tuned in. Perhaps all this can also be felt without the sensors, but the signal might be too weak to notice.
Thus, sensors can help develop intuition. (Sometimes about ourselves and almost always about the others)
There are many other examples:
Night vision goggles → see like an animal
Movement detector → secure the perimeter.
Water sensor → alert and contain.
Microphone → amplify and transmit.
New data enters into sensorial field, novel neuronal connections form. Next time a signal occurs, sensation arises without the sensor → perception expanded.
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Then there is also the aesthetic aspect. Sensors can translate the invisible into visible, light waves into sounds, magnetic impulses into sensations. We can see the form and the shape of an impulse, it can materialize, affect, and have a real physical or psychic impact.
In a way, sensors are evoking spirits or ghosts. The devices are talking to us in codified / imaginary languages, we can feel something we usually don’t, this opens up a range of aesthetic and intellectual sensations that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
Sensors help humans (and machines) perceive the invisible, while also increasing the range and scope of affordances. They help extend the agency and, at the same time, build relations and integrate into the environment.
In that way, sensors are the diagnostic devices that can be used to explore oneself in a creative way.
There is also a possible toxic aspect. If the sensors are used purely for self-optimization or for attaining some kind of ideal state, the relationship changes.
From something that expands the range of available options, sensor becomes a constraining device.
Temporarily this can be an interesting way to limit one’s own freedom in order to escape from habits. However, at some point, this can backfire and the newly available datapoints — especially when related to some objective “ideal” — may become a source of guilt and self-deprecation.
These feelings may be further exacerbated by manipulative tactics used by product designers to lock people in and control their dopamine reward cycles.
This interplay between transcendence and control reveals a paradoxical relationship where sensors, which can be seen as liberators of perception, can devolve into captors (this is what my InfraNodus graph told me, but I like this phrase).
It is then up to the users to avoid this devolution by allowing room for uncertainty in their interactions with technology. Using the sensors in a wrong way, making connections between the signals that should not be there. Optimizing for the opposite of what the sensor is made for. Fostering creativity over conformity and curiosity over guilt.
The aesthetic experience becomes one of fluid interpretation versus rigid expectation—a dance between knowns and unknowns. It’s not about the perfect number or full information. Rather, enhancing one’s intuition and expanding the range of experience that emerges when sensors are correlated with the feelings and shapes in our bodies.