tendrils
Interactive Kinetic Garment, 2010

tendrils is an interactive kinetic garment that responds to collective touch. tendrils is a metaphor for the particles, filaments and networks that combine to create our collective selves, the interstitial signals that flow within our bodies, enacting Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the “flesh of the world”. Like a tidal-pool, tendrils reflects the movement and visual patterns as an eco-system of small movement and senses in which we touch ‘something of the self’ within an elemental architecture.
The tendrils garment is reminiscent of an active and intelligent skin that responds by shivering, quivering, sighing, and ‘alighting’. These skin like responses are actuated by a series of small, interconnected motors and light that reflect the inner energy and nervous system of the garment. Based on biological cellular structures that alter their structural form as a response to touch, tendrils’ subtle movements reflect its ecological connection to our larger movements as a whole.

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soft(n) survival strategies for interaction
Interactive public art installation, 2005 - 2007

soft(n) explores intimacy and experience through physical interaction with 10-12 networked soft objects that exhibit emerging behavior when touched or moved within a space. The network recognizes the quality of tactile and kinesthetic interaction, responding to how objects are touched or moved. Interaction with the soft objects elicits behaviors such as humming, shaking, sighing, singing and shared moving luminous patterns. Each soft object is hand constructed and contains a specially designed, hand-sewn and custom-engineered soft-intelligent-tactile input surface, motion detectors, and an ability to respond through vibration, light, and sound.

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move.me
single-user interaction prototype for soft(n), 2005 - 2006

move.me is the prototype system for soft(n) and the first phase user test scenario for the V2_Lab contribution to the Dutch EU Passepartout project. This initial proof of concept enabled iterative testing of hardware, software, fabric construction and user interaction. A single interactive cushion/pillow was designed to test ambient response and control within a home entertainment environment.

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exhale: breath between bodies
interactive wearable public art exhibition, 2003 - 2005

exhale: breath between bodies continues the technological exploration initiated with <between bodies>. Exhale explores the empathic nature of networked breath. Networked breath is used to create output patterns through small vibrators sewn into the inside of the waistband, and speakers that are embedded in the lining of these sensually evocative skirts. This response enables a hidden and “inner” one-to-one communication between bodies in the installation, so that one body’s breathing can directly affect another body’s skirt. While individual data is represented inside the skirt, collective group-breath is made visible on the exterior layers of fabric on the skirts by using a specialized LED arrays that “light up” in a continuous cycle according to collective breath rhythm. Breath bands wrapped around the chest measure the ebb and flow of the breath cycle. Communication protocol was ported to Nokia Smart Phones.

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<between bodies>
wearables for the telepathically impaired, 2003 - 2004

<between bodies> the precursor to exhale, was the first interaction prototype exploring a wearable network of skirts. <between bodies> uses EMG sensors that detect muscle contraction sewn into garter belts worn beneath the skirts. The skirts respond to movement with small fans embedded in the lining. Small motors also respond to the detection of movement, some that move the exterior wall of the skirt fabric as if it is alive. The metaphor of the use of the skirt lining is the creation of an inner experience for the participant, non-visual but palpably physical. Toshiba PDA’s were used in “Body Area Networks” situated in garments worn on the body.

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whisper
wearable body architectures, 2001 - 2003

whisper: wearable body architectures was the first in a series of three interactive wearable public art installations that explore interaction with one’s own body data. whisper is an acronym for [wearable, handheld, intimate, sensory, personal, expressive, responsive system], a term that is now used to describe the focus of the research group. The whisper installation is based on small wearable microcontrollers, and wireless network transmission using physiological data: heart rate and breath. Sensors are embedded in a soft white jacket-like garment with detachable sleeves, reminiscent of a hybrid kimono, pajama and smoking jacket constructed in a soft comforting fabric. Visualization and sonification of body data interaction is projected onto the floor in small “light pools”. Participants can share data through specially designed snaps located on the jackets. Connection snaps are positioned to create playful and intimate movement interaction. Multiple participants can “snap together” to create group data-bodies and to engage with their output through their movement.

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Felt Histories
Interactive Computer Video Art Installation, 1998 - 2000

Felt Histories is a networked computer interactive sound and video installation. It contains a specially designed tactile sensor surface embedded within a doorframe contained at the end of a 20 foot long corridor. The interface responds through the participants act of touch. Video and sound is mixed in real time through a networked computer system, and rear-projected through a plexiglass surface that is embedded with small piezo-sensors. Story fragments of an older woman are represented through projected video image and sound. She responds to the users touch (direction, pressure, area), engaging the user in various scenarios that occur at the threshold of the door-frame. The pace of the work is extended, sensual and attenuated.

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Bodymaps: artifacts of Touch
Interactive Computer Video Art Installation, 1995 - 1997

Bodymaps: artifacts of Touch is a computer interactive sound and video installation. The piece uses a specially designed sensor surface that is embedded beneath white velvet. Images are projected on the surface from above. Touch and proximity sensors detect a participant’s presence and contact with the surface. The piece is silent until caressed. It responds to proximity and caress with movement and sound. The effect is sensual, disturbing, highly charged and openly affective. The intent of the work is to create a relationship between participant and technology that invokes a space of experience, reflection and vulnerability, a delicate balance that attempts to incite an awareness of one's relationship with oneself through the act of touch.

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In immerce dance material is explored and navigated using an interface metaphor which is based on a process grounded in Merce Cunningham's working methodology and in the nature of dance itself. Cunningham's process deals complexity, the incorporation of chance procedures, the relatedness of space and time, and multiple points of reference.Its development explores artistic, technological and research possibilities for interaction between two partners: the participant, who explores the dance material, and the system, which organizes and presents the material.This prototype project is designed to reveal the scope of the Cunningham dance archive and the richness of Merce Cunningham’s dance material collected from over fifty years of making dance, and to provide a mechanism to support a deeper understanding of the nature of dance through Cunningham’s work.

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