Back in the studio with a handful of components and a faint idea of the outcome by the end of the week. Exciting. This is the second week of Close to the Body. The same teams return to their prototypes and rethink, reiterate and redesign the wearable objects in order to make them sense and actuate and form some kind of communication among the wearable, the body and its surroundings.
Close to the body second week. Adding electronics
Second week’s task was to integrate electronics to existing garments thus improving their qualities.
Our idea was to augment experience of using garment by adding phonic layer. Physical perception of movement change is ingenuously linked to auditory sense. It connects physical and emotional experience and creates broadened sensual empathy. Motion remains as a key factor. Soundscape varies depending on intensity, expression, sharpness and speed of movements. Different sound expressions could be created while dancing, embracing or exploring surroundings with minor moves of fingertips.
Team: Furqan Habib, Lucas De Sordi, Marta Gilart (ESDI), Moushira Elamrawy.
Close to the body. An interesting title, that made us all clueless in the beginning about what it stands for, and how could it yield to a physical “product”. Our biggest surprise was by the end of the week, when we managed to merge four different motions and sensations together, in a very interesting wearable.
The first week of this studio focussed on the experiential in the design process. In a way, you could call this a bottom up approach: our designs grew out of a personal experience each one of us had in Valldaura. This is the opposite of the top down way of designing, where an abstract, theoretical concept is the point of departure. The motto was: “show, don’t tell”. We were encouraged to focus on what we felt during our experiences in Valldaura and explore those very subjective feelings through quick prototypes.
close to the body studio first week. Embracing bow
It is about motion and experience of sensations. And controlling them with the body. Tightly weaved knit on the shoulders frames and gives sense of assistance. On the contrary fragile net on arms allows to sense surroundings with skin and fingertips. The bow responds to the motion and creates slightly different space for the body to note environment you are in.
