It’s finally finished! And it finally has a name! For months our wearable technology project has gone unnamed, but today we are pleased to introduce you to Bio Circuit*

Holly and I got together on Friday to do some filming, and hopefully we’ll be able to post some footage of Bio Circuit in action very soon! We are working on a submission to TEI’10, a conference for Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction. Our video and paper submission will be to the Explorations category, so keep your fingers crossed for us as well.

** thank you to the beautiful and wonderful Angela Henderson for being our model

The next step was to create a logic-flow chart, which would form the foundation for writing our program. I had some help here, along with the programming, from the lovely Bryan (thank you Bryan!). Once the logic was written, the rest was easy for Bryan, and started to make some sense for me.

The ’sketch’ for now works as follows:

- we can now give the sketch a random heart rate, and it will calculate which track the MP3 player should play, and successfully move to that track. Believe me, it sounds much easier than it actually is! The last step now is to successfully get the heart rate monitor interface (HRMI) to talk to the arduino, which is what we are having problems with now.

I’m quite well versed in sewing, so this project has been fairly straightforward in terms of creating the wearable portion. The trickiest part is always creating the pattern. Holly and I want to create a high-collared garment, so that the speaker can be embedded within the collar next to the wearer’s ear. The collar is going to be higher on the speaker side, and then scrunch down on the other side, so the wearer can hear the environmental sounds as well. The photos I’ve posted show the beginnings of patterning, with a paper and mannequin mock-up, and then me wearing the very crude garment that I’ve thrown together, before the tailoring and adjustments I’ve made now.

A sketch has been settled on, and I’m in the process of making a pattern for the garment. The collar of the vest will be high enough to cover one of the wearer’s ears, while the other side can be scrunched down so that the ambient sounds of the environment can be heard as well.

After I make a pattern, I’ll sew together a quick muslin and work out the details. Simultaneously, we will be working out the details of our electronic components as well! So much to do, so little time. But at least its fun!

I designed the five rings that fit together to form a miniature iceberg landscape in a three dimensional rendering program, and then had the rings 3D printed. The next step is to cast them, make molds, and experiement with materials. Icebergs are fragile and disappearing, so I was thinking of using a fragile material like porcelain. Or maybe, since one day they might be compeletly gone, perhaps I should immortalize them in something like gold or silver. The idea of bronzing something to freeze it in time, and remember it forever (like a baby’s shoes I guess) also seems interesting.  I’ll let you know how they turn out!

Time for everyone to choose a direction and go with it! Time for us to share our ideas! And time to get working!! I am collaborating with ECUAD Masters student Holly Schmidt for the interactive wearables project. The idea is to work with the human heart rate, and externalize the interior sound of the body and the heart beating.

I wanted to see what else was out there using heart rate, and I came across Diana Eng’s project, Heartbeat Hoodie.

The hoodie uses a heart rate sensor and a camera to take pictures whenever your heart rate increases. The photos automatically upload to a blog that you can refer to or share with your friends. According to Eng, it is intended as a form of involuntary blogging.

“The camera is wired discreetly through the seeming of the garment to a basic stamp that communicates with a wireless heart rate monitor. The basic stamp uses an algorithm to analyze the heart beat for increases that might signify a moment of excitement or interest as opposed to physical exercise.”

The conecpt behind this project is useful for Holly and I because it is taking data from the heartrate and turning it into something else, something external. It also creates visual data from ‘excitment’ from the monitor involunatarily, which could provide some evidence or something you were not aware you were ‘excited’ about. It’s an interesting way of externalizing something internal, and the involunatry aspect is especially appealing to me.