Patrick Obolgogiani (00:05)
Anu, warm welcome. As you know, this

anu (00:07)
Thank you, bye.

Patrick Obolgogiani (00:08)
is called Art and the Science of Breathing, and I feel like you're one of the people that like truly goes by the art description of that, but also bridge towards the science, which I'm looking forward to getting into. Maybe let's start with the fact that you spent eight months actually wearing two devices that were measuring kind of different

anu (00:26)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (00:27)
things about the body, especially related to breathing. Could you

anu (00:30)
Right.

Patrick Obolgogiani (00:30)
kind of talk about what was going on there and and

What happened when he noticed them kind of

anu (00:36)
Right.

Patrick Obolgogiani (00:37)
describing something that he didn't feel inside?

anu (00:40)
Right. So I mean, just to give a bit of a context, my reason to wear these two wearables was largely because I was doing my PhD. And I very keenly looking from the technical cultural aspects of these technologies. So also coming from the emerging media studies, you so how do these media objects really making meaning to us and

The inquiry began from there and how do these translations of these meaning making happen? And my research started out also because these two devices had become quite needed for the moment. A bit of a history goes such that, you know, I come from a space very different from the US. I'm originally

Patrick Obolgogiani (01:23)
Mm.

anu (01:24)
from India and...

our lived environments are always outdoorsy. You're never in a controlled environment. But coming to the US, one of the things that I every day woke up to was what's the weather like? How am I to be prepared? How hot is it going to be? How humid is it going to be? And so I think these devices became a very natural thing to have because you are constantly with your Apple Watch.

And at some point when there were these glaring realities of the air that we are breathing, it also led me to start looking at another device which would, you know, try to help me see like, you know, are these devices really making sense to me? So I thought, okay, maybe another device would be a good reading.

And that's how I started wearing another smart wearable ring. yeah, and then I decided that this is what my study is going to be. I'm going to invest more and more time to look at what's happening with these two devices on my body. And I went to bed, I lived with it the entire eight months. And so it was quite interesting, you know, I've had instances where

The devices were in conflict with the same body. The physiological being is me, the person who's experiencing me, but the devices who are reading me are telling me two different things, right? I think that was what was the reality. Some of the baselines with which they were operating clearly were different. One would say that

Hey, you very well rested. You've had the sound sleep and you are like gearing up for the day while my body was not really telling me that. Right. And the ring was telling me another reading altogether, not very different, but significantly

Patrick Obolgogiani (03:09)
Yeah.

anu (03:09)
different to say that, okay, these are like absolutely in friction with how I'm feeling to what it is telling me. So that's what

Those are the frictions of study that I was looking at.

Patrick Obolgogiani (03:23)
Yes. Yeah, it's a really interesting angle to look at it. And I got as you already alluded to, you have an MBA, you have this curing degree, and then you have this PhD in arts and technology. I'm I'm curious

anu (03:35)
Great.

Patrick Obolgogiani (03:35)
to hear, like, what do you think that combo lets you see that maybe,

anu (03:41)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (03:41)
you know, other people looking at wearables or engineers, clinicians

anu (03:44)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (03:45)
perhaps would not?

anu (03:48)
Right. So let me go back to how this whole journey started. I ran a makerspace in a fab lab based out of Bangalore. So what it meant was we were catering to a very diverse set of people as makers. It was a public laboratory, so people were coming to build things. They had great ideas, so they really wanted to realize those ideas. And somebody as me who was facilitating that space, trying to ensure that

all the pieces move together for this person to really build the thing. Often the people who come from the technical side come with very measurable outputs like, okay, fine, I need to get this done and let me just do it and help me do it. But I think I was somebody who was more interested in the meaning making of it. Like, why would you do this? Who, mean, of course they would know.

who they were making it for, but were they digging deep enough to ask those questions of who, why, what does this really do? Who does it really benefit? And are you making certain assumptions of who these people are who's going to be using this? So I think that

Patrick Obolgogiani (04:55)
Mm.

anu (04:55)
technicality is what I was able to bring into the process. And the MBA certainly, I think for me, when you think about MBA,

It gave me the tools to understand that things circulate in systems in a market. So which means that there needs to be a business model to it. And at the same time, if you come to think of it, not just business models, it's also about what is getting extracted when these technologies come out to the market. So the framing for me became more and more clear through my curatorial studies.

One is the business aspects. One is how are you seeing the technical aspects meet the real demands of the cultural need. But now the curatorial aspects of things was however much, whatever is being presented, contextualized and positioned in relation to other things, how does it shape the meaning as much as of itself? So what's the story we tell about

this part of what it is. So I think these three were never in conflict with one another. It was more about how were they speaking to one another. And I think PhD in the technology side of things, the arts, humanities and technology gave me that language for thinking. And I think that's what makes the possibility of how these human experiences are

co-produced. And that's how these two came together. all the three or four pieces of my life in terms of cultural understanding to what counts to what makes business ideas worthwhile and investing in came together. So that's how I would say it.

Patrick Obolgogiani (06:42)
Yeah. No, I think it's particularly in the age of AI, like that we're all kind of exploring at the same time what it means to be human. And I think the meaning-making aspect

anu (06:47)
Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (06:50)
of this is like at the tip of everyone's tongue. So I think the having language, as you mentioned, like or the expertise to understand how to even think about that in a concrete way, can be can be really, really useful. One one thing I'm just very personally curious about, because like I think your dissertation was called like the

promise and perils of wearables. So I'm curious, like what made you reach out to Alveus early on? I think it was like early this year, like what what is there something different about our approach that made you curious about what we do?

anu (07:22)
See, I think I had already started my research. I was neck deep in what I was trying to do and looking at these variables specifically from breath, right? And

Patrick Obolgogiani (07:32)
Yes.

anu (07:33)
that is the most important physiological experience that we are all trying to capture through these devices, of course, through the heart rate. And the heart rate will not be read without the breath, right?

And they both are absolutely complementing one another. And for me, I was looking at several of the other variables as well. What does it mean? Some of them are like not necessarily the intense technologies that we're talking with algorithms, but as simple as a blowpipe. But

Patrick Obolgogiani (08:04)
Mm-hmm.

anu (08:04)
I think your Kickstarter campaign caught my attention also because

I came with some bit of skepticism, right? And a skepticism was not about dismissal. It was more to do with paying a very critical, careful attention to what people are saying and what are they telling. And I think clearly in the Alvio story, the Kickstarter, you were approaching it in a very, very different way. You were asking the questions about what happens when

you can sense breath continuously and the kind of humility is very rare in wearable spaces. Most companies are always trying to promise certain sense of certainty. We know how you're performing. We know your complete recovery status and trust our algorithm attitude. I think you seem to be more genuinely curious about what becomes possible and also about what

gets complicated when breadth becomes data. So I think that was the thing that caught my attention, that there are no big claims. You're not trying to oversell yourself. And

Patrick Obolgogiani (09:14)
Mm.

anu (09:14)
I think you were also trying to say, are the kind of constraints do you navigate? it's also about, because those are the things that as a researcher one is interested in.

What values are you trying to protect? And where do you compromise and why? I think there's a lot more thinking that's happening. And I'm hoping that, Alveos, as you're getting into the market, you'll become more and more, the engagement should matter not from, I wouldn't say that I'm an ideological purist.

Patrick Obolgogiani (09:45)
Yes.

anu (09:46)
It's great, but.

When the business has to make sense, I think both have to have equal parts to being sensible and meaningful of what one draws from the other. So I'm hoping that

Patrick Obolgogiani (09:58)
Yeah, no.

anu (09:59)
Alveos is in that direction. Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (10:02)
Indeed, if we ever get pushed pushed in some direction by the forces in

anu (10:07)
Absolutely.

Patrick Obolgogiani (10:07)
in our in our vicinity. I think one thing that I think philosophically speaking is interesting to note

anu (10:13)
Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (10:13)
is that there are a lot of technology out there, I think for in this case nervous system, but also in other areas where when you start using the technology essentially is trying to kind of make you dependent on it, where

The more you use it, the more dependent you become on the tech. And in the case of, for example, these vagus nerve stimulators, like

anu (10:33)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (10:33)
if you become r to rely on them to feel less stressed, then then essentially you're kind of becoming hooked. And it's not like they're not helping, they are probably helping, but at

anu (10:43)
Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (10:43)
least for a lot of people, they might be just becoming more and more reliant, and and you become less self-reliant without that tech. And I think what's different here is that it's at least in theory, we're trying to

anu (10:54)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (10:54)
teach you to

become more meta aware of your own breathing patterns and teach

anu (10:59)
Right.

Patrick Obolgogiani (10:59)
you that kind of by feed with through by feedback with this little haptic nudge of like, that's how it feels like when I'm, you know, become aroused when it comes like physiologically. And then over time you need that less and less, hopefully. And also you learn the patterns of how you actually steer the ship with your own breathing. So

anu (11:16)
Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (11:16)
even if you take out your alveolas and and put it out, in theory you should be better prepared and more resilient than without it. But

anu (11:25)
Absolutely.

Patrick Obolgogiani (11:26)
Anyway,

we'll see if that's the case.

anu (11:28)
I think every new technology also has to start to accept that they're willing to sit with some of the hard questions, and

Patrick Obolgogiani (11:37)
Mm.

anu (11:38)
the hard questions about what they're doing. And I think you seemed willing to operate in that space, not finding it as a deterrent. And that's why I think I reached out to you, yes.

Patrick Obolgogiani (11:49)
Hm.

You mentioned breathing, which was kind of the key key thesis and you literally alluded to maybe this answer, but I'm curious, like, 'cause you have a lot of different things that these things track and and breathing is there's like the hearts, there's depths and there's many things. Like what what was it about breathing that made you like focus on that area?

anu (12:09)
So I think, did I ever mention to you this story of mine where when I came to the US, I think it was the first spring that

Patrick Obolgogiani (12:17)
Mm.

anu (12:18)
actually, see, I think COVID did something to all of us, right? That was the first time that we all became very, very aware of how we are breathing, what air we are breathing.

and who are we breathing it with along in the same space. So until then, it was something that we all took it for granted. And now

Patrick Obolgogiani (12:41)
Mm.

anu (12:41)
suddenly there was this, okay, this is my breath. This is the space within which I'm breathing. This is the environment. Now let's maintain this space of mine, which is in the atmosphere is something that cannot be crossed. And we started putting our own

measurement metrics of our breath. But

Patrick Obolgogiani (13:01)
Mm-hmm.

anu (13:02)
post COVID while that all happened also

the environment for me here in the US because of these constantly being in controlled spaces. know, the air that I was breathing was always controlled. And I live in a city

Patrick Obolgogiani (13:16)
Mm.

anu (13:17)
like in Dallas, right? The summers are terrible. You can never be out so easy. And the winters are extreme. So breath is this threshold phenomena. I feel that is almost instantaneously. You can take control.

conscious control off. There is no other automatic voluntary phenomena of the bodily processes that you come across that you can take the control much easily as we speak of breath. Your heart beats and you can't control that beat, most certainly not all the time. But breathing is something that you can suddenly pay attention to.

consciously pay attention to and control it. And now this is one thing where it led me to understand during the time that I had moved to this country and with the severe poland in the air, right,

Patrick Obolgogiani (14:13)
Mm.

anu (14:13)
I went through this one catastrophic incident, you know, I think it was so bad, the poland, I was waking up extremely foggy and

There was one such instance, one of those mornings where there was acute numbness in my right hand, my entire right side of the body. And I was rushed to an ER, you know, and only to realize that I was under the impression I was having a stroke. thankfully the ER confirmed that it was just the polons in the air and had more life to live with this question about what's happening to my body. And

Patrick Obolgogiani (14:46)
Yeah.

anu (14:47)
That was when I realized that breathing is never just internal. It has both the elements of the externalities and the internalities with which you are constantly negotiating.

Right. And I think that is when it became more and more clearer to me that any of these variables that we're talking about health rely significantly on the heart rate. And for the heart rate to be read, there is this breath factor which needs to be very closely paid attention to. You you might go into any sets of theories, but without the breath, the heart

that we speak of and the sleep that we speak of, the movement, the steps, anything that you choose, you could not lose breath out of that conversation. So this is, and I think that's what did the magic, you know,

Patrick Obolgogiani (15:40)
Mm.

anu (15:40)
to make that very conscious decision to study breath through variables. Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (15:47)
Yeah. Yeah, I think what's interesting is as you very well know, they usually infer breathing from your pulse. 'cause

anu (15:53)
Yes.

Patrick Obolgogiani (15:54)
you can kind of trace it with understanding how the breathing changes the inhale and and your exhale

anu (15:59)
Yes.

Patrick Obolgogiani (16:00)
your your heart because faster and slower. But

anu (16:03)
Yes.

Patrick Obolgogiani (16:03)
there aren't that many wearables that actually detect directly your breathing rate.

anu (16:08)
Absolutely.

Patrick Obolgogiani (16:10)
What about the Yeah, please go ahead.

anu (16:13)
No, no, I was just saying that often most of these devices are only relying on the proxy data of your breath, right? So the direct measurements as much as a spirometer is the most closest accurate one that one would talk of. And of course today in consumer variables, we're also talking about you guys, but

Patrick Obolgogiani (16:32)
Mm.

anu (16:33)
it's always relying on proxy data of other things.

Patrick Obolgogiani (16:37)
Yes, yes.

anu (16:38)
So that's where it becomes more and more intriguing and more exciting to read the unknown.

Patrick Obolgogiani (16:47)
Yeah. What do we look at both sides separately? You have the promise and the perils. And I'd love to delve into both. I think on the promise side, it's kind of it seems like the main benefit I've seen across the board with Aura Whoop users and also others is the idea that through self reflection you can change

anu (17:06)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (17:06)
your behavior on the based on like the data you've been getting like week after week. I think the most typical example is alcohol use where

I think Woop had this

anu (17:14)
Thank you.

Patrick Obolgogiani (17:15)
big study where after people who t use Whoop, they tend to lower their intake of alcohol because they can see how it destroys their sleep. And it's like a, you know, a decent change in your both your life but also the actual outcomes that come out of it. Like what else did you find in terms of like the promise and also when it comes to mean meaning making like that comes from typical warbals?

anu (17:37)
Right. So I think one of the most important things that I keep talking about, especially

breath and the wearables is also because it has a long history attached to it, right? Any of these technological devices, are the promises that it has been made possible? I think the minute we realized that breath, which is so invisible, was now made visible, right?

The mechanism, which is very abstract, is now something that in some bit of a concrete sense you're able to see, which was not done before, right? And which means that then it made the pathology visible to us. How are we really, if you're wheezing, you're crackling, you're breath,

Patrick Obolgogiani (18:23)
Mm.

anu (18:25)
it's now telling you that.

which otherwise it was a felt understanding of somebody who was trying to explain that, know, I cannot catch my breath. It is so, so far and distinct that people cannot even gather what is happening. But the minute you are trying to see through these devices, I'm not only talking about either or of the variables. I'm also going back to some of these clinical devices, right?

Patrick Obolgogiani (18:55)
Mm.

anu (18:55)
they allowed that transition to happen. So you're able to see that there is a certain dysfunction or the abnormality that could be now read more closely and understood better. And that's how the mechanism in body becomes more clearer for one to understand.

Right. Now, for the longest time, only the doctors through their stethoscope had that, you know, authority to say, hey, I hear you, I understand you, and there is a certain sense of a clinical gaze, as one would put it. Right. I mean, as you come back through science and technology studies, you trust that device, the doctor, even though you're telling the doctor that, hey, I'm finding heaviness in my heart.

The doctor would just keep nodding at you, but the stethoscope is running around your body because he or she is verifying what I'm saying through that stethoscope. So it is being mediated. Right. Now these variables, the consumer variables have given the agency back to the wearer, the user to see that, Hey, how was your body doing? How are you feeling? Are you able to coherently see that?

what you feel and what you sense is also something that's made visible through some data points from your own vitals. And

Patrick Obolgogiani (20:17)
Mm.

anu (20:18)
that was the promise that I think is brilliant and the variables have made it extremely the possibility of continuously monitoring oneself.

Patrick Obolgogiani (20:28)
Yes.

anu (20:28)
So you're able to see, okay, what's my peak? What's my low? What's my average? So these are the things that has been the promise, I would say, because you're now able to see a certain pattern at what point, when is it that I'm not feeling comfortable.

at what point, what are my externalities that are influencing my breath now. So I'm able to now better understand where I perform better, where I'm not performing better and where I might need help and where I need to pay attention to. So these are the promises I certainly see value in. But at the same time, the perils are the places where the dependency is so much that your felt experience of the body to

your reading of that data when they are in conflict and there are often times that you will see these conflicts. Then you're not able to make a judgment call about your feeling to what you're reading is where the agency is now at question. right.

Patrick Obolgogiani (21:33)
Mm-hmm.

anu (21:34)
So that's the perils part that I'm talking about. So how much do you rely on these devices to tell you how you're feeling?

because the embodied experience, it's your body ultimately, right? So you should also be, and you need to also understand that they're all working through certain averages of your body type. So not that you are not getting the data that you have been promised, but it is about how that interpretation is throwing at you that now is informing a certain way of understanding yourself.

So that's the perils part that I'm talking about. If one is able to not make a judgment call, one's own bodily experience to one's own reading of that output is where the conflict is. And those are the perils

Patrick Obolgogiani (22:26)
No.

anu (22:27)
that I'm more interested in. And as we keep producing more and more technologies and bringing more and more out in the market, people losing their agency to recognize their own bodies is the problem.

And that's what I'm alerting everyone to.

Patrick Obolgogiani (22:42)
Yeah, I think the classic meme where the example is the one where you wake up, you feel great, then you see your s sleep score is like sixty out of hundred,

anu (22:49)
I know.

Patrick Obolgogiani (22:50)
and you're like, no, I feel bad now. And then you actually feel worse as if your sleep was worse than

anu (22:55)
Absolutely.

Patrick Obolgogiani (22:56)
it was.

anu (22:57)
Absolutely. And that's where I keep saying that, you know, there was this very interesting article that I read long time ago. I can't name who that is. The researcher is talking about who is laboring whom. Is the device laboring you or you are laboring the device? You know, so

Patrick Obolgogiani (23:12)
Yes.

anu (23:13)
and it is so obvious if you're always in that state of perplexity and not able to understand.

you what are you abstracting and what are you taking out? And so that's where the question truly matters.

Patrick Obolgogiani (23:28)
Hm. I think for myself, speaking for myself at least, now having been wearing the wearables for quite a long time and of course now also professionally interested in like the space and how other people do it. And what I find is that they're useful for accountability because you feel like somebody's watching. So when it comes to whether it's like fitness goals or whether it's maybe steps or something like that, it's just because somebody's like logging them, they feel more important.

But there's of course

anu (23:56)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (23:57)
the the counter side of that, which is like I've seen other people at least, myself of course. then you start like doing things like almost like performative. You're performing for the wearable and then you're gonna

anu (24:05)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (24:08)
you're trying to satisfy it like you know, I get a s a particular number and you know, you wanna have your streak on. And there's like it's difficult because on one hand, it feels like as you mentioned, you're losing agency, but in at least when it comes to steps, you're actually improving your health.

when you're losing agency and you're trying to get the steps in for to

anu (24:26)
Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (24:26)
get this you know streak, it's

anu (24:28)
Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (24:29)
for a stupid reason that like in the short term, like as a the motivation is not the right one, but actually

anu (24:34)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (24:34)
the benefit is long term, it's a good one. Like how do you think about the the trade off between agency and in this case health outcomes?

anu (24:43)
See, one of the things that I keep saying is what are these technologies really helping us aid? I think two things that come to my mind at the very top, right? One, to make you become very self-aware of your discipline. So which means that it is helping you discipline your body, right? I mean, you can always counter-argue with the panopticon theory of Foucault.

Like, you you're being always

Patrick Obolgogiani (25:10)
Mm.

anu (25:10)
watched and the sense of surveillance is bringing a certain sense of discipline in you that you're performing now. But let's look at the brighter side of that in the kind of lifestyles that we live today.

Habit formation is what we are all trying to struggle with. There are good habits that one can form and bad habits one can form. So if you're able to use these technologies, like as everyone says, an atom bomb can be used for a good reason and there are wrong reasons as well. It's very simple to that.

if you're able to instill the right habits which is good for you, you know, with your time, your age, your pulse, then if these devices are facilitating that and the dependency that it is creating, if you're being mindful of that dependency also like because now your circadian rhythm has been aligned to your everyday activities, right? It has helped you. It has helped you

gain that agency to say that even when this device is not there, this is how my body has been trained. have made this habit, I have internalized this habit and I live with this habit for the better of myself. Now, whether the device exists or doesn't exist, it has helped you join that path, get to that path

Patrick Obolgogiani (26:32)
Hm.

anu (26:33)
and you are able to make that journey forward for yourself.

But if you are not going to trust yourself after that habit formation, that habit itself can turn into many other things, right? Then you start becoming like, you know, okay, the dependency is so much so and also the way that we start reading the multiple layers of it, which might not be insightful for you.

You're just burdening your mind to take unwanted things to like, you know, draw you out of your own, what do you say, from your state of mind to become very disturbed. Why would

Patrick Obolgogiani (27:15)
Mm.

anu (27:15)
we want that? Right. So if you're able to draw our lines to the way we use technologies, and these are all the unintended consequences of any technology that will come.

through us, right? We as

Patrick Obolgogiani (27:29)
Yes.

anu (27:29)
human beings are prone to it. So these are all the plausible questions that we will have to throw at ourselves and see, my God, what does it mean? Why do I behave in a way that I do with these devices? So these are all questions that we might have to start asking ourselves at some point.

Patrick Obolgogiani (27:49)
Yeah. Maybe taking a a slight sidestep or not much, but can we talk about sensing prania, right? So you had this maybe you can describe what it is and then what was the learning and takeaway

anu (27:59)
Okay.

Patrick Obolgogiani (28:00)
you had from that.

anu (28:02)
Right. So why the word prana? Prana comes from a Sanskrit word and in the yogic practice, we look at prana as not as just the act of inhalation and exhalation. Prana is this vital force of energy that is traversing through your body. And if you have the ability to control your breath, have

a higher chance of prana being the most active proponent moving through all your chakras. So for me, when the question began as a designer, as somebody who's coming from critical media studies aspect, trying to look at what does it mean to look at any of these technologies more closely and the translation of it, I said, I'm going to create a

a playful interaction and take it to a space which is in an engineering design conference where you usually see the pulse of those conferences are like super busy. People are making poster presentations, they're talking about accurate numbers of their algorithms. They are trying to present and pitch technologies as the ultimate goal of life.

So in that kind of a busy engineering conference, I decided to do this exhibition as something that was a moment of pause and reflection where people walk through this interaction in a very playful sense, but take away the many, many nuances of what I was trying to talk about, breath and the measurement of breath. So Sensing Prana was this exhibition that

you would see, which is very inviting. I think it had a very different visual pause in the entire conference where the serenity was at its forefront. So you walk up to a pinwheel, right? And the natural tendency of the pinwheels is where you blow into it. So the moment you blow into it, you're trying to see what's happening where

There was an interesting sensor that was placed inside that device through the cast of it. So it would capture your breath. All that it was doing was based on the pressure sensor, calculate a certain value of your exhaled breath. was only making note of the CO2 levels.

It would throw you in a certain range and there was this thermal printer attached to it as an output. So there was also the screen. So the moment you are now seeing that, okay, I have given my breath, there's a certain sense of expectation of analysis of my breath. Right?

Patrick Obolgogiani (30:48)
Hm.

anu (30:49)
So I was like, okay, so what are these people doing? I just wanted to see how they respond to this.

So when you blow into it, there was also a visual interface where you would see almost like these molecules scattering up and down and settling in. These were all just visual cues to play around with the participant. And the thermal printer would print out a breath print. So it is almost like you go to a lab, you've given something for a test and you are waiting for your values.

Right. So this is also trying to say that A very transactional, your breath is now being transacted and here is a transactional slip that I'm handing it over to you. And it would just say that, you know, your breath is taking a break. So they would be like, what does it mean? What exactly does it tell? Is it a good breath? Now they're not trusting their own breath.

But they're like, okay, does the value change? Can I breathe into it again? Can I blow into the spin wheel again? You the sense of uncertainty when you shake them up, it's amazing

Patrick Obolgogiani (32:00)
Mm-hmm.

anu (32:00)
to see how people respond to their breath print. So they're like, am I going to do better in my next one? So I had one of the visitors who would go like, it was a three day conference and all three days she would come, blow into the spin wheel, take the receipt.

try and compare. So I'm like, hey, what are we talking about? This is exactly what this sense of, you know, the quantified self becomes so much so that you lose a sense of what you're doing. Are you paying attention to what, how you're interacting

Patrick Obolgogiani (32:33)
Yeah.

anu (32:34)
with your breath? So this was a very playful, critical, designerly take of asking people to pause about their breath and their measurement of breath.

and see how they respond to it. And that was what sensing prana was all about. Prana is such a complex experience of one who is not identifying that the alignment of both the bodily movement to the breathing to your conscious soul, prana is never going to be at a state that is at its optimal.

So this was more about just heightening their senses to understand how we are interacting with these technologies and where we are standing with that. That's what sensing prana was all about. you know, breath is,

Patrick Obolgogiani (33:20)
That's a great great story.

anu (33:22)
yes, and also breath as trace, know, breath is a moment that has passed by, it has just gone through. And now you're trying to get this trace out of this breath print, which is like, you know, captured a certain moment in time.

And also the ephemerality of the breath print because all these thermal prints tend to fade with time.

Patrick Obolgogiani (33:45)
Mm.

anu (33:46)
This is the theory of Derrida's trace that I was trying to play with. And that's what sensing prana was all about.

Patrick Obolgogiani (33:54)
Yeah, it's a great story with the lady. I I can sort of imagine like how you like start comparing with your friends, like, who has a better breath and you know, of h higher force

anu (34:01)
Yeah, you wanna come there.

Patrick Obolgogiani (34:03)
and and it's like no no no, that's not what it it was about. But and it's also like as you mentioned, the quantified self. Probably when it came about, I don't know, fifteen, twenty years ago, probably even earlier, in in the early stage it was like additive to the existing fully qualitative narrative, right? It was like, you know,

anu (34:20)
Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (34:20)
for the first time we actually start quantifying, we can

Do experiments, we can see how this affects that. But then it is true that I think in in modern day, that movement or at least lot of the conversational narratives around that have become completely like disassociated from the qualitative experience in a way

anu (34:37)
Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (34:38)
that it's not no longer like complementary. It's like almost like if it's not here, it doesn't matter. So which is kind of

anu (34:44)
Yes.

Patrick Obolgogiani (34:45)
the whole point of of of your work. Maybe if we take someone who's in that position who is

one of those people who wakes up and they're like feel worse because of their wear ball is telling them X and they feel Y or they just like have trouble already kind of actually with interception with understanding their own their own body like what would you recommend? I know it's not like this is more like exploratory in nature your your study, but if you have any just any advice for someone like that, what would you say as a next step? How do you get back into the agency?

anu (35:18)
So I think, you know, when let us understand what's the intentionality with which we are sensing these devices, right? I mean, often when we're talking in consumer variables, it's just every other.

user who's bought this. For me, it was very, very specific to my research. For an athlete, it is performance based and that's the reason why they're using this specific

Patrick Obolgogiani (35:40)
Yeah.

anu (35:41)
device. The use cases are very, very different from one to the other.

So if you're going to put them in a band saying that we are all common, we're all the same body types, that's not going to work either. So for anybody who is always in conflict with it, I would say that, know, dig deep, a little more inquiry to look at whether the ways that you're reading the datasets, you know, are what do you say are in correlation with the other datasets that are also coming your way.

Because most often you do not rely on one particular device. You always want to see with the benchmarks of the other tests as well. Because often when you are going for your blood work, blood vision, you're doing your other things, you want to see as one.

collective document or one collective reading of how are these making sense? Is this really what I'm feeling or is there some bit of an ambiguity in reading this? Get the help that you need. And I think most of these devices do not have the support system, clinical support systems that one should really provide support to.

Everything has become a subscription model, so which means that the access through those subscription models becomes very limiting and it's cost prohibitive for a consumer use. So even if there are FAQ pages that are made accessible more and more in terms of their clinical assessment, because nobody wants to take charge of that. this should not be read as the final...

directive from this device. But if you're able to address more and more open forums for people who are self researchers, self inquirers, it becomes more educative of that particular device. And also for that person to feel the needed trust to gain, you know,

one zone agency and also work with the device. I think that's the piece that often gets missed. There is no moderated forums where people can trust whoever is saying in Reddit that he or she is a credible source to read that data

Patrick Obolgogiani (37:59)
Mm-hmm.

anu (37:59)
in a certain way. So if there is scope for companies themselves to create those platforms for conversations, make it more participative.

then it becomes more easy. Like, you know, they have so many chatbots that people create only to sell the device, but not to assist the reading on the meaning making of that output. If there is scope for that, you know, then it becomes like, hey, we are all participants of it. I am sharing something and I'm also getting a response feedback. And there is a group who is able to assist me and support me and think through this, not just for myself.

And maybe these conversations become the core material for the next upgrade of that device. So if

Patrick Obolgogiani (38:47)
Mm.

anu (38:47)
there are more support systems that create, I mean, rather than just selling the technology in numbers, but helping make meaning with those technologies because they both inform one another. Right? So that will

Patrick Obolgogiani (39:01)
Yes. How do you think

anu (39:04)
make a value add, I think.

Patrick Obolgogiani (39:07)
Yeah, and I think when it comes to like making meaning of data specifically and like in terms of what does this like how might you want to change your behavior based on what we see in the data? It seems like a lot of providers, including ourselves, are turning heavily into AI,

anu (39:26)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (39:26)
which is quite a good at pattern recognition. how how do you think that will change this kind of what you what you were seeing? 'Cause

imagine that you have as a primary interface, instead of seeing

anu (39:37)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (39:38)
numbers, you actually have an AI coach. And it either

anu (39:40)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (39:41)
surfaces something on its own or you ask

anu (39:43)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (39:44)
it questions based on your own observations. How do you think this will change in the coming, let's say, couple of years?

anu (39:51)
See, I think AI is also something that is human made, right? It's

Patrick Obolgogiani (39:55)
Hm, yeah.

anu (39:56)
an algorithm, ultimately. You are now, if you're able to train the model in a very skilled, responsive way, rather than to hold onto the tensions that somebody is expressing of their bodily narrative, if the train algorithm is...

Given the humanity and the humanness of the experience that we are talking, I think today's models are so well trained and have so much more to be calibrated with and that is the direction we are going to go. There is no escaping that at all, Patrick. It's all about learning to work with the algorithm much more. So how do you build the trust feature in the algorithm?

Patrick Obolgogiani (40:35)
Mm.

anu (40:36)
I mean, if we are really talking about the numbers that we want to meet, the kind of, you know, the vast, expansive population that we really want to touch through these mediated technologies. I think the training of these models have to be very diverse in nature. It cannot be, the basements cannot be with atypical body types, right? And I think we've had these conversations whose body, you know, the European male, cisgender, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But if you're able to bring in the model sets with the diversity that I'm talking about, be it from neurodivergent to any other extremities that we are talking about, if that's a possibility and also say that, know, the technologies also have to kind of declare that this is the limitations and the scope of this, but not as a disclaimer fine print thing, you know.

but making it more and more outright visible to people that this is the match, this is the information and this is how this device agreements are at, you know, and the disagreements can start. So if you're able to let your audience and your technology sit with the disagreements that are already there and allow

both sides of the spectrum, even the algorithm and for the human being to think about what it means with that disagreement, I think you've already built in a sound model. So rather than saying that this is one way or the highway, that's not going to work. And that's why I keep saying that,

The responses of any of these data sets, if you're talking about a therapist, is looking at something very different to a clinician who's looking at it very different, to an athlete looking at it very different, right? So I think AI is the way forward. Nobody's going to let go of it. I'm sure as we as human beings can train the model better and also have

Patrick Obolgogiani (42:37)
Mm.

anu (42:38)
both, both the human and the AI work together in this space.

That's what I said.

Patrick Obolgogiani (42:46)
No, it's well said. And I think as you as you kind of alluded to, it allowed us for two two way conversation, because then

anu (42:51)
Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (42:52)
you can actually say, actually I feel like this and then it allows us to learn

anu (42:55)
Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (42:56)
and the kind of feedback loop is is is critical in in improving the models.

anu (42:59)
And if there is

a opportunity for constant documentation to make it public, it's not about just the algorithm is working and keeping at

Patrick Obolgogiani (43:06)
Mm.

anu (43:06)
it for your research aspect, but make it more public, make it more evidently out there so that the participation from the public can be more and more. Then I think collectively you're able to grow the embodied experience of the person owning the device and the device also coming to be in the market for the right reasons.

Patrick Obolgogiani (43:26)
Indeed.

I know this has been a huge pleasure. Is there anything that you feel like we haven't covered but it will be worthwhile to still cover as we start drawing to a close?

anu (43:35)
I think we've done quite a bit. We've had

Patrick Obolgogiani (43:38)
And this

anu (43:39)
an interesting conversation about all of this. Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. Unless you feel there's anything else that's missing.

Patrick Obolgogiani (43:45)
If

w if people wanna learn more about the work you've done or maybe wanna actually reach out to to work on something adjacent to what we talked about, where can they they find you and more about what you do?

anu (43:57)
So first and foremost, I would really encourage people to read my thesis, my dissertation, which is there. I'm sure you're sharing that link. It's

Patrick Obolgogiani (44:04)
Yes.

anu (44:06)
called out as Exhaling Data, Promise and Perils of Variable Technologies. You should be able to find it on ProQuest. It's out there through Google Scholar. You should be able to find it. Otherwise, I have my website. It's anupamagowda.com. And you should be able to reach me very easily.

That's it. So I

Patrick Obolgogiani (44:23)
Brilliant.

anu (44:24)
look forward to more engaging conversations and more work together. Thank you so much, Patrick.

Patrick Obolgogiani (44:31)
Thank you, Anu. And for everyone listening, you'll find the all the links we just discussed in the show notes. Otherwise have a lovely and also hopefully agentic, you know, week forward so you you can still control. Thank you.

anu (44:44)
Absolutely. Thank you.