Bio Circuit
Collaboration with Holly Schmidt
2009 | Wearable Technology
Wool, taffeta, electronic components
* Published in the Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI) 2010, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, January 24 - 27, 2010
Bio Circuit is a wearable soundscape that uses the wearer's physiological state to provide bio feedback of their own state of calmness or anxiety. This is provided in the form of recorded sounds the wearer hears through a speaker embedded in the collar of the vest. 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, they will hear a cacophony of urban sounds such as people talking and traffic.
The user places a heart rate monitor around the rib cage, resting against the skin and close to the heart. The speaker connected to an MP3 player will play the audio track related to a specific heart rate.
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 bio feedback 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 their environment.
A special thank you to Suzi Webster, Bobbi Kozinuk, Emily Carr IDS, Bryan Rite and Angela Henderson.
