HARVARD GSD

Wearable Robots

Wearables as spatial interfaces

Architectural wearables sensing and shaping space

Today we are living in a digital symphony. A world comprised of a convoluted soliloquy of data transfer. A world where bytes are our currency, and information is our crack. We are living in hyperpixelated massiveness. Information is being mined at rates faster than we could have ever fathomed. Our objects are no longer neutral pleasures of everyday life. They are watching us. Our every move is being tracked, archived, processed, and analyzed. Our walls have ears, our windows eyes, our spaces brains. The world is watching. How can we defend ourselves against a world so untrustworthy, and discreet? Simple. We track it back. This collection of wearables was created for the purpose of exploring how wearables can shape spaces and spaces can shape them back.

From Krzystof Wodiczko’s and Anne Liu’s studio "Architecture of Cultural Prosthetics" at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Spy-der

Today we are living in a world where our every move is being tracked, archived, processed, and analyzed. The SPY-der dress reverses the role of surveillance, to make the user and the surrounding population aware of the presence of security cameras. When the dress senses the presence of security cameras, it engages by lifting its arms. The closer the wearer gets to the gaze of the camera, the higher the arms raise. Once they are within the cone of vision, the arms point in the direction of the camera, both seducing and fighting with its gaze.

Egoskeleton

Egoskeleton: A second skin meant to protect the inner and outer self. (ego) me + (skeleton) support. This is a time of massive surveillance living in conjunction with the love of attention. The EGOSKELETON acts as the users second skin, embedding itself onto the user rather than being an addition. The armor has two goals: Defend + Seduce. The sensors trigger the arms to move when another person approaches within a distance, mimicking the movements of both fight and dance.

Confessor & Professor

What happens when the opinions of one's mind are difficult to say and fear of physical harm exists, which results in the suppression of thoughts? What if one could express their opinions without physically being there to reduce fear? This is where the project injects itself. The confessor, a helmet worn by the fearful individual who wants to express, and the professor, a person volunteering their physical presence to broadcast this message. This allows the victim to dispel all fear, and talk freely, while giving the courageous volunteer the ability to broadcast their message without direct association with the message.

Pneumanus

Pneumanus is an experience where the building scale, and wearable scale, fuse together to form a symbiotic architecture. The wearable affects the building, and the building is worn.

Both the architecture and the wearable work as systems very similar to each other. They digitally sense the user’s breath through the werable, and respond physically with morphing pneumatics. Both the wearable and the architecture exist in a pneumatic membrane, a living, breathing spatial condition. As digital activity is received, the architecture inhales or exhales.

Omniveillance

We live in a world of second selves; of digital replicas and carbon copies. The virtual blurs the line between the physical self, and its unrestrained extension. In order to be truly fearless, one must know all, while knowing themselves; surveillance + sousveillance. The combination of these truths presents the real face of Omniveillance; the monitoring of the world with the monitoring of the self. This piece places the user in a world of duality. The external world is revealed in tandem with the reference of the self, allowing for constant personal awareness within outer context. The hinge distorts the space, blurring the boundary between self reflection and outer observation.