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Alton
Towers invited Brendan
Walker to stage a Thrill Laboratory event based at the park.
Walker chose to focus the event on riders of Oblivion,
the world's first vertical drop roller coaste. The resulting event
was billed as the
UK's largest study of thrill seekers, contributing towards Walker's
goal to define the Walker
Thrill Factor.
Walker
created a Laboratory
environment with activities borrowed from Psychology experiments.
He worked with graphic design company Hyperkit
to design the Rider
Thrill Dossiers used at the event, and recruited Thrill
Technicians from the University of Nottingham's School
of Psychology to conduct the experiments.
Walker
continued his collaboration with the Mixed
Reality Laboratory to further develop rider physiological
monitoring technology, which was operated by Thrill
Technologists from MRL at the event.
Walker
also invited two members of SHUNT
to act as Senior
Thrill Technicians (a promotion from Fairground: Thrill Laboratory),
to conduct special assignments, and escort
riders on their long journey from Laboratory to ride (equipped
with their Funfair
Sickness Bags).
Over
three days 80
riders were batch processed through the Laboratory's mixture
of scientific and surreal experiments which included:
Psychological
profiling, assessing thrill seeking tendencies.
Rider
monitoring, capturing
facial expressions, audio commentary,
heart rate, stress patterns, and the G-Forces.
Analysis
of ride videos and data in the laboratory.
Mug-shot
photographs, exploring riders’ ability
to fake emotions.
Spot the difference, assessing focus and concentration.
Memory maps of each rider’s emotional journey on Oblivion.
Palmistry, assessing prehistoric thrill seeking lineage.
The
growing collection of completed Thrill Dossiers and videos were
exhibited
in the Laboratory.
Walker
is continuing to work with the Mixed Reality Laboratory and School
of Psychology to analyse the data.
The
event was covered by on television by ITV,
BBC1,
BBC1
Live, and Discovery
(North America).
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