week 00
FINAL PROJECT TRACKER
As an architect, I think a lot about how people will interact with the things we design but I've never really been able to work at the immeadiate scale of the body. So my only criteria for my final project is that it be specific to the body - either something that is worn by the body or interfaces with the body specifically. I don’t really have experience in fashion design but figured: I also don’t really have experience in electronic design so why not combine it with something else in which I have equal inexperience.
Inspiration
Neil Harbisson
Eyeborg
Neil Harbisson is an artist, technologist, and widely recognized as the first human cyborg. Born with achromatopsia, a disease causing color blindness. Since 2003, Neil has worn what he call his “Third Eye” – a sensor that converts light frequency into tonal sounds for him to ‘hear color.’ Initially he had to memorize which tones meant the words we define colors with but eventually this translation became an unconscious perception and then a true feeling. This new sense of color hearing changes how Neil participates within the world – he describes museums as concerts and supermarkets as night clubs. I’m fascinated by the idea of gaining additional senses to interact with the world differently.
Daniel Rozin
Pom Pom Mirror
I’ve always wanted to make an interactive artwork like one of Daniel Rozin’s mechanical mirrors. Rozin creates arrays of binary objects which are turned “on” or “off” based on a motion sensor. His PomPom mirror was built with 928 faux fur pom poms, 464 motors, control electronics, xbox kinect motion sensor, mac-mini computer, custom software, and a wooden armature.
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Point of View Gun
As described by the Hitchhiker’s Guide, a Point of View Gun "conveniently, does precisely as its name suggests". When used on someone, it will cause them to see things from the point of view of the firer. Although making a point of view gun might eclipse the scope of a project in this class, I’m interested in making something that operates similarly by sharing senses.
Sputniko!
Menstruation Machine, 2010
The silvery device, which may or may not be merely conceptual, is worn around the waist like a belt. According to Ozaki's YouTube site, the machine drips about 80 milliliters (2.7 ounces) of blood from a tank to simulate the average flow of a five-day periodInitial Ideas
01 | The Functionalist: Solar Powered Pockets
I've always wanted to make a dress that could charge my phone while I was wearing it. However, this would take a huge number of solar panels and was essentially dubbed "basic af" during class.
02 | Hugging Sweaters
Neil recommended using vibrating motors in class and I liked the idea that motors would create an alternate form of sensing. I had some other ideas about "remapping" senses onto the body but they were eventually disgarded.
03 | Make Shift
I was sick for a week and had some very strange fever dreams. One of them was a garment that was clear with different kinds of panels within it. You would put it on when you began to make and fabricate things and it would give you additional senses about the environment. I liked the idea of this- a big problem with autonomous fabrication is that robots don't really sense/feel things. But in the end I wasn't exactly sure what the inputs and outputs would be and it was disgarded.
04 | Siren Brassiere
I thought about mapping Daniel Rozin’s mirrors onto some kind of wearable. Originally I wanted to do a collar because it requires very little tailoring. I was thinking of someing like Behnaz Farahi's Caress of the Gaze. I realized the problem with Rozin's mirrors is that they require a motor for every active component so I thought about reducing it to shoulder pads since I could print the base for each within one 3D printing buildbox. I wanted to do something soft but then thought why not have something that looks soft but isn’t supposed to be touched. Around this time, there was an ongoing trial in Ireland that infuriated me because it implied that what women wear implies consent about being touched that basically implied the old argument that women are “asking for it” when they wear certain items. Rather than internally screaming, I decided to move the shoulder pads to the breasts – creating a Siren Brassiere, that looks soft but you’ll regret touching.
05 | Privacy Hood
I finally decided to make some kind of privacy hood similar to projects like Meejin Yoon’s Defensible Dress. While I was researching I found a project by Li Zheng that was doing exactly what I wanted to do. I referenced her project frequently as I tried to design a structure for this thing.
Final Designs and Prototypes
