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| Friends, Hosts & Parasites | ||
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| Author(s): | Mouna Andraos Sonali Sridhar |
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| Instructor: | Papadopoulos, Despina Schober, Gary |
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| Class: | Personal Expression & Wearable Advanced Technology |
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| URL: | http://www.junksoup.com/fhp | |
| Documents: | Poster(JPEG) | |
| Keywords: | intimacy, co-operation, passive/active, responsibility, nurturing | |
| What is our relationship with technology when it resides within intimate boundaries of our body and extends as an expression of the self? | ||
| Two expressions of symbiotic relationships with technology inspired by nature, growth and survival: The first piece is living moss that can be wrapped around the body, shoulders or as headscarf to get protection from rain or sun. [--Give the drape a bit of moisture] The second is a relationship between the host (human body) and its protection. The host provides a support structure for a printed organism to grow like a parasite. When the jacket is worn, it slowly comes to life as color, and fades away when the garment is taken off. [--For this showcase, the organism is programmed to demo cycles of growth and death.] | ||
| Background: | This project explores relationships with technology that imitate the ones that can be found in nature in order to design technological systems that can be more efficiently adopted and used. The assumption is that the intimacy and the dependency inherent in a symbiotic relationship will resonate in the user as fundamentally human and as such, create a stronger and more natural bond with the piece of technology. Wearable technologies is an interesting place to develop these types of relationships first because of the inherently intimate nature of the relationship between the wearable and the wearer as well as the established physical proximity that makes a technology wearable. Ultimately similar design approaches could be applied to other areas of technology. | |
| Audience: | The main objective is to create conceptual rather than functional pieces for display and use in specific contained environment. | |
| User Scenario: | Part One: A drape made of air plants that can be wrapped around the body, shoulders or as head scarf when needed. The host wears the garment in hot days to protect from direct sunlight while providing the symbiant with the sun it needs to grow. The denser the plants, the more effective a protection they provide. On hot days the drape will also provide a cooling effect because of it’s porous qualities. Additionally, the symbiant needs moisture and the host needs protection from it so the garment can also be worn in rainy and misty days as a protection, which also helps the symbiant’s overall health. Part Two: A visual organism living and growing on a pre-existing garment (a jacket). A jacket will contain a printed pattern that is almost seamless when not active and comes to live through the illumination of the different graphical that compose it. The pattern, like a parasite or a wine plant, grows on the structure of the body as time passes until it grows into a fully blooming visual organism. When the jacket is removed, the organism slowly dies out until it disappears completely. | |
| Technical System Description: | The two parts of the projects are fully autonomous and self-powered with batteries. The plant organism is made of real living spanish moss. The visual organism is created using thermo-chromic inks and electrically controlled through conductive wire threaded directly on the fabric of the jacket. | |
| Project References, Research and Literature: | Thermochromic Inks http://www.matsui-color.com/ Conductive Thread http://www.bekaert.com/corporate/Default.htm References: Joey Berzowska http://www.xslabs.net/intro.html Francesca Rosella http://www.cutecircuit.com/ Zane Berzina http://www.skinstories.com/ | |