Cape Your Emotion
Starting from the shared experiences of being introverts, we conceive a wearable interactive device that can visualize the user’s emotional mood and therefore, invite more engagement between people who feel the same way. Our core concept is to visualize emotions and break the social isolation of people, especially in this context of great pandemics.
For the apparel design, we want to start with the model of a cape combined with a mask, so it’s more unisex and size friendly. The addition of a mask is an inference to the pandemic and also serves as a good connection to the heart rate sensor. Using heart rate sensors or motion sensors that can monitor the user’s emotional state/state of excitement, and further incorporating of a deformable membrane as the main material for the cape, we aim at turning these inputs into light effects through Neopixel LEDs or other LEDs and offer different moods to visualize the emotions of the user.
We believe that the two essential factors for this project are the continuity of interaction and aesthetic visualization. First, by saying continuity, we want the audience to have immediate and dynamic feedback throughout the period when they wear the cape. That means the NeoPixels on the cape will simultaneously change their color and pattern along with the change of the user’s heart rate or respiration frequency to show how the user feels from their physical reactions.
Second, we hope that the color and pattern derived from the user’s emotions can be visualized in abstract aesthetics so that they can be shared and appreciated by others. This process can create a resonance of emotions among people, and the abstracted light effects will allow them to communicate on not only an emotional but a spiritual level. In this era of the pandemic, where “social distance” would still function as an estrangement among people, our project offers a way out for the users to communicate beyond the barricade.
Technical Challenges:
To break down each technical component, in the main body of this device we will use either an Ear clip heart rate sensor or a vibration sensor to monitor the user’s heart and respiratory frequency. This is to roughly categorize the user’s mood into active/calm, and from here, we can make more detailed and different visualizations of their emotions.
After realizing this main body, we are also considering adding more visualization by changing the cape’s material into a deformable membrane, so that it invites people who are not wearing the device to interact with the wearer. In order to pick up deformation, we will use either flex/stretch sensors or using an invisible infrared (IR) LED to measure the brightness reflected off the fabric with an IR photoresistor while illuminating the back side of the fabric.
Of course, we will prepare enough LEDs and sensors. We will also test a lot of fabrics to see what goes well with these technical components. Since the detection of heart rate and the making of membranes are all brand new to us, we anticipate a lot of technical challenges lying ahead.
Context of Significance:
In Edmonds’ essay, he proposes two definitions of interaction, the first of which is “Dynamic-Interactive” in that the ‘viewer’ receives different feedback after one’s action becomes an input into the installation. A more complicated interaction would be the Dynamic-Interactive (Varying), during which the feedback from Dynamic-Interactive can be learned and has an impact on later engagement with the user and create a cycle of responses. In this inal project, I will try to add more in this “stage 3” to really engage with the user in a more stimulating manner.
This is one of the major inspirations for our project. The way this wearable installation integrates the fabric pattern with a light effect provides a very good example for us to design our pattern.