 I'm Aaron Sopouris with The Verge, but for half an hour I was someone else. I was a woman. I was a stranger. I stared down at the clay mask I held in my hands, struggling to comprehend how those hands which were clearly not mine were allowing me to feel its curves and cracks. As I glanced at the mirror in front of me, my new lip piercing glimmered under a harsh fluorescent light. This was not a video game. This was the machine to be another. We're always finding new ways to connect with one another. Email and text messages, Twitter and Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and with every passing year keeping in contact with friends near and far becomes easier. The concept of telepresence, of virtually being somewhere that you're not, has been a driving force behind this march of progress. Surgeons can perform operations remotely, business deals are hammered out on the opposite side of oceans, and millions of us use Skype and other services every day to beam our faces across the world. However, this, presence, is generally a one-dimensional experience. Remote interaction, for the most part, is limited to sight and sound. The dream of true telepresence still eludes us. I visited FabLab in Barcelona, a small-scale workshop offering tools and teachings in the areas of architecture, engineering, and computer-aided design. The specific team I met, Be Another Lab, focuses on experiential telepresence demos that promote empathy, tolerance, and self-understanding by showing you the world from another person's perspective. The experiment I tried is called The Machine to Be Another, and it's disorienting. After being carefully positioned, I closed my eyes and listened to a voice played through a pair of headphones. That voice was Norma, a 29-year-old anthropologist from Germany who was wearing a camera hooked up to my headset. As I opened my eyes, I was staring at the same room but from a different perspective. My hands looked like Norma's, but they still appeared to obey my every command. One of the artists from Be Another Lab approached me and shook Norma's hand, and I felt it. The experiment continued as a series of objects were trotted out to each of us, first a mask, then a cigarette tin, and then finally a mirror. I could feel each object with my own hands while seeing it through Norma's perspective. As I inspected each object, I started to believe what I was seeing was reality. Norma's voice was still being piped into my head, but with a constant sensory bombardment I had no time to think, and her voice became my stream of consciousness. The demo finally ended with me standing face to face with myself, shaking hands. Through simple means, The Machine to Be Another shows what that might be like. However, Be Another Lab's dream isn't telecommuting, or robotics, or anything like that. This wants to make us understand and care about one another. Be Another Lab has investigated the issue of identity and perspective with a massively popular experiment called Gender Swap, which, as the name suggests, lets male and female participants swap bodies. But it's also empowered people to do things that would otherwise be impossible, like connecting a disabled ballerina with a surrogate dancer, who expressed her dance outside the confines of her wheelchair. The team is constantly looking for new collaborators from both the art and science fields, and it believes a little empathy and understanding would be enough to truly change the world. The experiment's unofficial motto sums up Be Another Lab's ambitions perfectly. If you could better understand each other, could you better understand yourself? If you could see the world through the eyes of the other, couldn't we make a better world to live in?
 I'm Aaron Sopouris with The Verge, but for half an hour I was someone else.
 I was a woman.
 I was a stranger.
 I stared down at the clay mask I held in my hands, struggling to comprehend how those
 hands which were clearly not mine were allowing me to feel its curves and cracks.
 As I glanced at the mirror in front of me, my new lip piercing glimmered under a harsh
 fluorescent light.
 This was not a video game.
 This was the machine to be another.
 We're always finding new ways to connect with one another.
 Email and text messages, Twitter and Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and with every passing
 year keeping in contact with friends near and far becomes easier.
 The concept of telepresence, of virtually being somewhere that you're not, has been a driving
 force behind this march of progress.
 Surgeons can perform operations remotely, business deals are hammered out on the opposite
 side of oceans, and millions of us use Skype and other services every day to beam our faces
 across the world.
 However, this, presence, is generally a one-dimensional experience.
 Remote interaction, for the most part, is limited to sight and sound.
 The dream of true telepresence still eludes us.
 I visited FabLab in Barcelona, a small-scale workshop offering tools and teachings in the
 areas of architecture, engineering, and computer-aided design.
 The specific team I met, Be Another Lab, focuses on experiential telepresence demos that promote
 empathy, tolerance, and self-understanding by showing you the world from another person's
 perspective.
 The experiment I tried is called The Machine to Be Another, and it's disorienting.
 After being carefully positioned, I closed my eyes and listened to a voice played through
 a pair of headphones.
 That voice was Norma, a 29-year-old anthropologist from Germany who was wearing a camera hooked
 up to my headset.
 As I opened my eyes, I was staring at the same room but from a different perspective.
 My hands looked like Norma's, but they still appeared to obey my every command.
 One of the artists from Be Another Lab approached me and shook Norma's hand, and I felt it.
 The experiment continued as a series of objects were trotted out to each of us, first a mask,
 then a cigarette tin, and then finally a mirror.
 I could feel each object with my own hands while seeing it through Norma's perspective.
 As I inspected each object, I started to believe what I was seeing was reality.
 Norma's voice was still being piped into my head, but with a constant sensory bombardment
 I had no time to think, and her voice became my stream of consciousness.
 The demo finally ended with me standing face to face with myself, shaking hands.
 Through simple means, The Machine to Be Another shows what that might be like.
 However, Be Another Lab's dream isn't telecommuting, or robotics, or anything like that.
 This wants to make us understand and care about one another.
 Be Another Lab has investigated the issue of identity and perspective with a massively
 popular experiment called Gender Swap, which, as the name suggests, lets male and female
 participants swap bodies.
 But it's also empowered people to do things that would otherwise be impossible, like connecting
 a disabled ballerina with a surrogate dancer, who expressed her dance outside the confines
 of her wheelchair.
 The team is constantly looking for new collaborators from both the art and science fields, and
 it believes a little empathy and understanding would be enough to truly change the world.
 The experiment's unofficial motto sums up Be Another Lab's ambitions perfectly.
 If you could better understand each other, could you better understand yourself?
 If you could see the world through the eyes of the other, couldn't we make a better world
 to live in?