“Technology is not neutral. We're inside of what we make, and it's inside of us. We're living in a world of connections — and it matters which ones get made and unmade.”
- Donna J. Haraway

A collaboration between Rachel Freire and Sophia Brueckner, the Embodisuit allows its wearer to map signals onto different places on their body. It both critiques and offers an alternative to current trends in wearable technology. Most wearables harvest data from their users to be sent and processed elsewhere. The Embodisuit flips this paradigm. Informed by embodied cognition, the suit instead receives signals from an IoT platform, allowing the wearer to map personally chosen signals to modular haptic actuators on the body. Knowledge is experienced ambiently without necessitating the interpretation of symbols by the conscious mind. The suit empowers wearers to reconfigure the boundaries of their selves, strengthening their connection to the people, places, and things that are meaningful to them. Furthermore, we hypothesize that by changing the way people live with data, it will change the type of data that people create.

This project utilises the material experiments and processes explored in the project SECOND SKIN. Go here for tutorials, etextile connector ideas, and more relevant imagery and links.

A film by Oliver David   |   Stills: Rachel Freire   |   Model: Alexandra Groover

EMBODISUIT V1:

ETEXTILE PROTOTYPE:

WORK IN PROGRESS:

ABSTRACT:

Embodisuit: A Wearable Platform for Embodied Knowledge Sophia Brueckner and Rachel Freire.  Arts Track proceedings of ACM TEI 2018 Conference on Tangible Embedded Interfaces [OPEN ACCESS]

PHOTO DOCUMENTATION:

PROTOTYPING: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelfreirestudio/albums/72157683299162666

MODULES AND CIRCUITS: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelfreirestudio/albums/72157680295931813

ETEXTILE CONTROLLER: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelfreirestudio/albums/72157681593397721

TUTORIALS:

HOW TO MAKE THE CAPACITIVE WHEEL CONTROLLER: https://www.instructables.com/id/Capacitive-Wheel-Fabric-Sensor/

CAPACITIVE WHEEL CODE/VISUALISATION: https://www.instructables.com/id/Capacitive-Sensor-Visualization-With-Processing/

SOLDER WICK JUMPER WIRES FOR RAPID PROTOTYPING: https://www.instructables.com/id/E-Textile-Jumper-Wires-for-Snaps/

TUTORIAL: a basic stretch circuit Instructable: http://www.instructables.com/id/Stretch-Circuit/