Magic Mirror: An Interspecies Interface

A concept for an intuitive touch/gesture-driven interface to make art or music with other species.

Within the last 50 years, humans have created interfaces to connect with one another online, mainly (but not exclusively) utilizing keyboards. But keyboards require various degrees of training before they can be used, and moreover are specific to discrete letters or symbols. Diana Reiss has trained dolphins to use an underwater keyboard, and at least some great apes- notably Kanzi, a famous bonobo in his mid-thirties- can be taught to use lexigrams (essentially, keyboards populated with symbols representing various concepts).

In addition to communication by visual symbology, some apes can use piano keyboards. Peter Gabriel has had magnificent and extraordinary experiences playing music with bonobos. But what if we could connect and interface with animals in new and profound modes without a need for humanistic peripherals (like keyboards) and possibly without a need for specific training? Could animals interface intuitively with each other and with humans in novel ways?

Could we interact through the very medium that often separates us- a glass panel?

Through gestures or touch, along with simple tracking cameras, humans and other animals could interact through shared, symmetric visualizations and sounds. Content of the display could be highly symmetric, colorful imagery as in the below graphics.

One can imagine many other types of content as well, including musical experiences, spatial memory games, ecologically-relevant stimuli, or entirely unique concepts developed openly by members of the public, scientists, or students.

Illustration by S. Milner.