Meeting 12/03/08 @ Anja’s studio

Our first meeting after the workshop. From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Present were Anja, Barbara and Danielle.

We started off by rethinking the project:

  • Is it necessary for our project to work with pressure points? Working with them is very precise work that has to be done by a human to be effective.
  • Maybe it’s more useful for us to work with area’s instead of points? They can be visualized by heat sensitive ink.
  • The element of communication and touch is crucial for the wearable, it should stimulate (bodily) contact between the wearer of the garment and others
  • Practices like Reiki and Shiatsu prove the power of touch
  • We could consider tension treatment on a specific area of the body. For example neck tension could be relieved by placing a warm hand on the tense area. We could also use vibrators to relax tense muscles.
  • Is there a way to express a surplus of good feelings (like: I feel energetic, full of love or peace)?

We also thought about how to communicate our project, what language to use. Do we mention the type of ‘New Age’ things that inspire us? We decided that the most important thing to communicate is that the wearable is an added means of communication for the wearer. It can express inner states that may be hard to talk about. It also makes it more easy for people to communicate in a direct and free way. These are things that a lot of people long for. For those interested we can elaborate on the ‘softer’ and medical side of the project. So we can have levels of communication about the project.

Our goal is to make an attractive wearable that will appeal to a large audience and still express the more vulnerable side of people and help them with emotions, awareness and communication.

These are the main elements of the wearable:

  1. Interaction on area’s using touch
  2. Communicate moods/inner states
  3. Make use of meridians, chakra’s, pressure points
  4. Levels of states: body > emotions > spirituality

Way of measuring inner states:

  1. Switches: choose mood from a given set
  2. Sensors: GRS, heart-rate, muscle tension, breath-rate, skin temperature, blood-pressure

Ways of expressing inner states:

  1. Changing ink (area)
  2. LED light (spots)
  3. LED wire (area)
  4. Luminex (area)

We wrote a letter to Frank Kooi asking him for advice and a meeting.

We decided to start this blog to measure progress and to exchange and centralize idea’s.

We continue our research on the output (materials) and input (sensors).

The next meeting is planned on 02/04/08 @ 11 a.m. @ Anja’s studio.

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