Posts Tagged ‘wearable’
Our video of Bio Circuit is now online. Take a look and tell us what you think!
http://www.vimeo.com/7748200
This video depicts the collaborative wearable technology project of Bio Circuit in action. Bio Circuit was created at Emily Carr University by myself (Industrial Design student Dana Ramler), and MAA student Holly Schmidt.
Bio Circuit is a vest that provides a form of bio feedback using data from the wearer’s heart rate to determine what “sounds” they hear through the speaker embedded in the collar of the garment. The wearer places the heart rate monitor around the ribcage, resting against the skin and close to the heart. An MP3 audio player embedded in the vest plays the audio track related to that specific heart rate. The audio tracks are soundscapes mixed from a range of ambient sounds. If the wearer’s heart rate is low, the soundscape will reflect a quiet natural area with sounds such as water, birds and insects. If the wearer has a high heart rate then they will hear a cacophony of urban sounds such as people talking and traffic.
Bio Circuit stems from our concern for ethical design and the creation of media-based interactions that reveal human interdependence with the environment. With each beat of the heart, Bio Circuit connects the wearer with the inner workings of their body. In this sense the garment functions like other biofeedback devices that use sensors to provide a person with information about their physiological state. With Bio Circuit, we are proposing that these kinds of devices could extend a person’s awareness to include the environment.
* A special thank you to Suzi Webster, Bobbi Kozinuk, Emily Carr IDS, Bryan Rite and Angela Henderson.
Tags: arduino, Bio Circuit, heart rate, soft technology, technology, wearable
Posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 in dana's portfolio work | No Comments »
Bio Circuit at IF'09: Stereo
Bio Circuit will be a part of the Stereo Exhibit in the Concourse gallery of Emily Carr University this week.
Stereo Interactive Futures ‘09: Stereo (IF’09: Stereo) will be hosted by the Intersections Digital Studios at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver. IF’09: Stereo offers a broad thematic reading of “stereo” to include research and art works that use techniques and devices to lure the body into ephemeral spaces. Examples include stereographic films and animations, linked interactive performance spaces, simulated touch interfaces, binaural sound works, and mixed-reality art works. IF’09: Stereo has invited practitioners who are working with subtle uses of immersive techniques, illusionary space and objects, and telepresence that evoke unexpected responses and challenge the modes of creation used by popular entertainment media and technologies…>
IF’09: Stereo has invited media artists, designers, researchers and filmmakers experimenting with: stereographic projection; illusionary sound and vision; methods of co-location (ways of simultaneously mapping and representing more than one location).
If you’re interested in seeing Bio Circuit for yourself, you can visit Emily Carr University (1399 Johnston Street) on Granville Island in Vancouver. Stereo will be in the Concourse Gallery from Nov. 18-22nd. IF’09 is on from Nov. 19-21.
Tags: Bio Circuit, clothing, design, electronics, exhibit, hearbeat, heart rate, hrmi, sound, technology, textiles, wearable
Posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 in dana's portfolio work | No Comments »
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 
Tags: Bio Circuit, clothing, electronics, fashion, final project, heart rate, technology, textiles, wearable
Posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 in dana's portfolio work | No Comments »
Ok, so by the end of the day, I was jumping around the WIP lab with joy!
That’s right, you guessed it: success. The changeover to the lilypad arduino went smoothly, and when we hooked it up to the battery power source everything worked!So now the technology pieces must be integrated into the garment. This will involve some temporary tacking and pockets, because we’re not sure exactly how it will work/feel once it is part of the vest. So before permanently altering the garment I’ve worked so hard on, we’ll try some arrangements and continue to develop that aspect later. But for now, we are both very happy with what we have.
Although it’s not done yet, I’ve posted some photos of the vest (a work in progress).So everyone will just have to wait and see how the whole thing looks together tomorrow morning.
Good luck everyone!
Tags: clothing, design, fabric, heart rate, hrmi, interactive, lilypad arduino, programming, prototype, sewing, sketch, sound, technology, wearable
Posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 in dana's portfolio work, design, wearables | 2 Comments »
As the long weekend rolls along, I’ve been madly trying to complete my project. Holly is working on the sound files, and I have been busy programming and sewing. We have established the heart rate ranges we would like to work with, and Holly is busy editing the “sounds” that go with each of those ranges.
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.
Tags: arduino, clothing, design, fabric, fashion, heart rate, hrmi, interactive, lilypad arduino, pattern, programming, sewing, sketch, technology, wearable
Posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 in dana's portfolio work, design, wearables | 6 Comments »
In addition to images of the 3D printed versions of my fragile jewelry, I also have some softimage renderings of the rings as well. The idea is to play with material and meaning. If the rings were made of gold and silver, what would the message be about icebergs as precious and rare? If they were bronzed, what would that say about preserving something in time? If they were glass and really did break when you wore them, what would that mean? And if they were made out of a totally unexpected material, such as pink plastic, what would that say about souvenirs, commodifaction and exploiting the beauty of nature?
There are so many options already, and I’ve really only just begun!
Tags: accessories, design, fragile, iceberg, jewelry, material, meaning, wearable
Posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 in dana's portfolio work, design, wearables | 1 Comment »
In addition to the electronic aspect to the project, there is also the textile/wearable component. Holly and I went to check out fabric and notions, and gathered a lot of inspiration for the form of the garment. We looked at fasteners, buttons, tubing and a bunch of stuff we don’t even know the names of, and came up with some great ideas for detailing.
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!
Tags: Bio Circuit, clothing, creativity, design, fabric, fashion, inspiration, material, pattern, textiles, wearable
Posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 in dana's portfolio work, design, wearables | No Comments »
My first love in this life has always been jewelry. That love affair couple with my new-found interest in wearable technology has led me to find some very exciting examples of jewelry that incorporate elements of technology. Kyeok Kim’s Aurora project uses patterns of light projected from pieces of jewelry onto the body as ornamentation. ‘Aurora’ highlights the relationship between different pieces of jewelry, by its nature the pieces interact with the another.
To operate the decorative light, one must gently move the ring (containing a magnet) towards the main jewelry piece. This project is interesting to me because it expands on what the idea of jewelry is as ornamentation, making it more than just a piece of something that you decorate your ear, neck or wrist with.
Tags: accessories, jewelry, light, ornament, pattern, projection, skin, surface, technology, wearable
Posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 in design, wearables | 1 Comment »
It’s about that time….
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.
Tags: accessories, camera, clothing, communication, fashion, hearbeat, identity, interactive, my final project, technology, wearable
Posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 in dana's portfolio work, wearables | No Comments »
Seeing that I am so inspired by icebergs, I thought I might relate my fascination into some sort of “practical” application for my exploration with thermochromic ink. The connection was obvious to me: body heat makes the ink disappear (supposedly), icebergs are disappearing, human activity is causing them to disappear, SO therefore screen print icebergs onto a tshirt so that the body heat of the human wearing the shirt will cause the icebergs to “disappear.” With me so far??
I am by no means an expert in silkscreening (in fact, to be honest, this is my first attempt in years, and likely only my second or third attempt ever) so it was a bit of a learning process. I began with a “stencil”:After carefully applying the stencil to the screen (yes, for those of you looking carefully, that is obama in the background). Then, the lovely Annabelle helped me prepare the ink mixture and set up for my practice rounds of silkscreening.
My first two practice passes didn’t work out perfectly, but I decided to go for it on the tshirt the third time. This may have been a mistake. The actual silkscreening didn’t work out perfectly, which was a little disappointing, but I managed to fill in the parts that didn’t work with a paintbrush instead. The message is the same, the image is the same, it’s just the method that didn’t work as I had hoped. Oh well.
Here’s how it turned out:
Obviously, as soon as the ink dried I was eager to see how it would disappear. The results were also a little disappointing in that sense as well. The black ink I used faded to grey instead of disappearing. Others in the class who used the magenta ink eperienced more success in having desired aspects disappear with body temperature. If I were to do it again (with access to any colour of ink that would actually completely disappear) I would use a blue ink on a white shirt again. I think the blue reads better as icebergs than black, but hey, you make the most of what you have, right?
I like the idea of secret messages being hidden within our clothing as we wear them throughout the day. Ideally, these icebergs would disappear completely and only the person wearing the shirt would know they were there once their body heat “melted” the icebergs. As a person gets dressed each morning, perhaps their clothing could contain reminders (one of climate change, for example) that they see as they pull it out of the closet or off the shelf. Perhaps our clothing could contain secret messages, quiet reminders, or images that are special to us that only we can see. Perhaps this serves no true “purpose” in the eyes of many. So what?
Tags: climate change, disappear, fabric, fashion, iceberg, silkscreen, temporary, thermochromic, tshirt, wearable
Posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 in dana's portfolio work, design, wearables | 3 Comments »
