Project 2 - Onoga Kaku Hada (Proposal)

Onoga Kaku Hada ( My Second Skin)
Chantal Brière -9361871
c.briere@hotmail.com

My Second Skin?

My second skin protects me. It is strong and also thick. It is a shield that protects me from my environment, and a weapon to fight against the exterior. It is a skin that envelops my natural one. It responds to the pain I lived in my life. In a way to protect me, it is inert and does not sense anything. It protects me, the alive and sensitive inner layer. It is based on natural and organic elements to confuse my enemies. However, it is not a clone of my own person, it is an independent, autonomous organism. My second skin does not modify my physical skin, it adds to it. It is a symptom of my own phobias, and a cure to my lack of confidence.My second skin does not add anything to my person in term of time prevention or physical amelioration. It is more psychologically important and useful. It gives me strength and confidence. Even through age and time, it is still the same and provides the same fundamental function. It is a part of me, but does not try to change what I look like. It is a disguise, an illusion to the outside world, but underneath it, I am still the same. Every year.

The protective function of my second skin is based on the inertness of it on the outside. It is the dead part of me that protects what needs to be and keep it alive. It acts like a shell, and it is not technologic on the outside. However, it testifies my strength and life. It doesn’t rely on technology to be. It uses my own body to enhance technology.

Also, my second skin is opaque, hiding me from the outside world. It prohibits any interaction. It is not particularly dense; in fact it can be thin or thick, depending on how strong I need it. However, it is sharp and pointy. My second skin is beautiful, but changes quite often. It also allows me to feel like a chameleon and to feel comfortable in any situation. It does not have any color; it is virgin and pure.

My second skin is a shell, is paper, strong, weak, white, dark, thick, light, protective, jealous, possessive, sharp, pointy.It changes all the time, it accommodates to any situation.

Description of the project

As a starting point for this project, I looked again at the notion of second skin. What does it mean to me? How do I perceive my second skin? My second skin is something that protects me. It is also a part of myself. It is a shield to the exterior, and a weapon at the same time. It knows how to show off, impress, because it is beautiful and admirable. Even if it protects me, sometimes it also hurts. It changes my body, or the perceptions others have form it. It is a costume, and when I’m wearing it, I metamorphose, I change, evolve, and it gives me the strength to do anything I need to. My second skin or onoga kaku hada consists of shoes. They are platforms so they change my posture, my height and my status towards the others. They protect my feet, but also hurt them. They are covered by origami, so they really impress, but they also costume me, metamorphose my feet into weapons, and show off objects. By using a simple mechanism inside the sole, they light up LED at the back of my foot. By doing this, they give me strength and confidence; they show off my power and assurance. Also, the origami itself is beautiful but sharp, like a terrible weapon, available only to myself. When I will be wearing these shoes, the persons surrounding me will be able to see my importance and will respect me more (concept). They will be worn as usual shoes, and I would like to be able to still see the skin of the foot. So I’ll be working with open shoes.

The mechanism will be based on the one presented in the tutorial of my research. It consists of a spring that activates gear mechanism inside the sole when you walk. The gear parts come from basic rechargeable flashlights (the type that you turn a crank to recharge it). So basically, while walking you will compress the spring and slacken it. This movement will move a big gear, activating the two smallest generators. These generators will be connected to the LED. The whole mechanism is hidden inside the sole of the platform. I wish I could use basic high heels, but since I never did this mechanism before, I think I should do it in an easier way and fix it on the inside.

Circuit of a crank flashlight

Here is a list of the materials I will need for this project:
- Shoes
- Paper
- Thread
- 2 crank flashlight generators
- 3 to 5 LEDs
- Wire
- Wood
- Spring
- Piece of re-bar- Screws
- Drill
- Band saw

I still need to figure out exactly how to do it. I’ll probably need some help for the circuit and where to fix what, to make sure my circuit is close and the LED will light up. I’m not that good with electricity so that’s what I should work on. I also need to figure out which origami pieces I want to produce to create a dynamic pattern.

References

1-How to Make Electricity When You Run Tutorial
Another tutorial that could have been useful, however it uses the part of the body behind the knee instead of a shoe.

2-LED eyelashes
Artist's website

3- The Swing Skirt4- Human Antenna

5- The Human Synthesizer

6- Touched by Strangers Wearable Art Performance

7- DIY Power Generating Shoe
This is actually the tutorial I will follow to create the mechanism inside the shoes. Instead of using a charging wire for a cellphone, I’ll just place the LEDs.

8- Human Generated Power Device – Firefly

9- Piezoelectric Tiles
Another source

10- Generating Electricity by Walking

11- Power from fabrics

12- Origami dress
In her previous collections, in the Blank Page, Sandra Backlund uses origami to create a dress. Very inspiring. Here are the pictures.

Research Presentation (annotated bibliography)

Chantal Brière
9361871
c.briere@hotmail.com


1- How to Make Electricity When You Run Tutorial

Here is a tutorial based on an article of the Daily Planet. It consists of a elastic band around the knee (or just below).
You can make one using an elastic, glue, a piece of plastic, scissors and a squeeze-kind of crank flashlight.
So you glue the plastic piece on the crank of the flashlight, and you fix the flashlight to the elastic in a circular way. You just need to put it on and you'll be generating energy while you run!

The only thing I don't really like about this project is how they use the whole flashlight and not only it's components. These kind of flashlights are the one we used last class, so it's pretty easy to found how to break them apart and use their components instead of the whole thing.

It is also close to what I would like to do, using the action of walking to produce energy. I was mostly considering shoes, but it reminds me that other parts of the body actually move while walking.

Here is a link to the tutorial

2-LED eyelashes

This "product" is designed by artist Soomi Park as a "product that speaks to many Asian women’s desire for bigger eyes." It comments a social behavior by exaggerating it. The lashes are in fact hooked to a tilt sensor with mercury so when you tilt your head or perhaps whole body in specific directions, the lashes light up.
So in this case, it's the movement of the head or of the body that activates the sensor.
I found more information about sensors here.

I think it is pretty funny how this "product" fulfills woman's need of having bigger eyes. It do not necessarily encourages the idea of self-confidence and the appreciation of our differences.

The artist website
The blog post on fashioning technology

3- The Swing Skirt

This garment is a skirt that can be used as a swing. It has an influence on stressed people. The skirt shows the heartbeats of the wearer. The lights shows the changes in the heartbeat of the wearer while he/she is swinging. The skirt can be used anywhere where it can be hung. It is also made by the artist Soomi Park. I don't have much information about this piece and the materials used to produce it.

This also fulfills another human need, the one of being comforted by someone, or in this case, something. The movement of the swing relaxes the wearer and remind him/her good moments in their life, even maybe their mother or something familiar like that.

The artist website

4- Human Antenna

The Human Antenna is a project by the artist/designer Florian Kräutli (Swiss). It consists of a white carpet interwoven with conductive thread. So when someone steps barefoot on this lush surface, it transforms the person into a living antenna. The body of the person will receive radio waves and the caret uses these waves and make them possible to hear. Also, by walking on the carpet, you can tune the "radio" to a certain frequency, exactly like you would do with a regular radio tuner.

It is really interesting to see how the whole body can be the last element needed for a switch. In this case, the body is way more than just another component, it is also the main element of the project, the antenna.
In such a case, the body could also be used as power generating like in my other example with the piezoelectric tiles (number 9-10).

Human Antenna from Florian Kräutli on Vimeo.

Here is the post on fashioning technology
Here is a link to the designer's website

5- The Human Synthesizer

This human synthesizer is a project from the musician Calvin Harris in collaboration with some masters students from the Royal College of Art's Industrial Design Engineering program. It as been made with arduinos, conductive paint and the use of bare skin .

The paint used in this project is called Bare, a non-toxic ink/p aint developed by Royal College of Art students. It can be applied directly to the skin and transforms it into a highly conductive surface.
In the human synthesizer project, Calvin Harris painted 15 dancers/performers to transform them into switches to play musical notes by doing high-fives or tapping with their feet on large disks on the floor. These disks (34) are connected to the computer via Arduinos and uses the graphical audio programming tool Max MSP.

The different combination of switches' use create different sounds to play the song they want to. All these combined to a MIDI controller which is used to create music sequenced and quantized with Ableton Live.

This kind of project uses a lot the choreographic idea of our project by stepping on tiles and clapping hands, etc. It could be also used by moving hands, shaking feet.

Here is a link to the blog post on fashioning technology

Here is a link to a blog on fashioning technology about "Bare" paint

6- Touched by Strangers Wearable Art Performance

Touched by Strangers is a performance art piece by two students, ALexander Reeder and Yutaka Kitamura. The piece presents two actors dressed in white with hand prints made of conductive fabric. When the to actors embrace or caress each other or by passerby, a video animate.
The piece as been exhibited at Greylock Arts as a part of the Wearable Expressions Exhibit in 2009.

This project could also use the idea of the movement of the body if the wearer would be dancing, the movement of the feet or the arms.

Here is the video projected

Here is another link about the project itself
Here is a link to the blog post on fashioning technology

7- DIY Power Generating Shoe

This is a simple step-by-step tutorial on how to create po wer generating shoes using flashlight pieces, just like we've learned. However, this is the kind of system you can use only to turn on an LED, not to store energy. The tutorial even suggests you can charge your cellphone with it.

Here is a list of the materials you need:
- Shoes with the thickest sole possible because all the components will go inside it
- Two generators from flashlights
- A spring
- some wood
- a piece of re-bar
- some thick wire
- some small screws
- a cellphone charger (for this tutorial example)
- a drill
- a band saw
- electrical tape

Then the steps are really simple and well explained;

1- Hollow out the shoe (using a utility knife + pliers) and drill a hole on the back or side of the shoe to let the charger out.
2- Get the two generators out of the flashlights (keep them attached to the gears and keep the screws of the flashlight)
3- Assembly the generators to wood pieces and screw this wood piece to another one separating the two first. These are the base of the mechanism.
4- Take the two biggest gears that came with the flashlights to create the axle that will turn both sets of gears and place it between the two first sets.
5- Do a back block to hold the other side of the generator assemblies and to hold the spring (it consists of one piece of wood)
6- Cut a small piece of re-bar and drill a hole into it to place the wires into it. This part will go in the middle of the back block and the spring will go over the re-bar.
7- Put all the pieces together and pass the charger wire through the hole in the sole. Connect the charger wires to the wires of the generators
8- Then you do the lever and install it with the other parts.

You're done!

This project present another alternative to what interests me, generating power while walking. It also uses flashlights, like we saw last class, but in another way. I think it is really helpful to see these kind of generating power objects, but not the mechanism.

Here is a link to the tutorial with more detailed explanations than mine.

8- Human Generated Power Device - Firefly

Firefly is a human generated system on a bicycle. The author/designer is hard to establish, but it has been used in India. The system accumulates the energy from cycling through the day in a country where bicycle are over-used. The electricity is stored and used in the evening as light source and allows people to do their basic activities.

The system contains a dynamo (electrical generator), a safety lamp for the bike and a battery with a simple circuit. It also contains a switch to power it on and off. The battery can be removed from the bike at the end of the day to power, in this case, a hand-made LED lamp (built of an old CD and plastic container)

The whole video is very inspiring about what we can do with very simple circuit, tools and materials.

9- Piezoelectric Tiles

Thi project has been developed by POWERleap and it consists in tiles (flooring system) that lights up with every step on its surface. It uses piezoelectric materials, which generates electricity when it is compressed or bent. The energy generated from it are stored in a battery which is used to power the LED tiles.
The project uses the urban foot traffic to generate its power.

Here is a link to the company/brand which developed it
Here is a link to the blog post on fashioning technology

10- Generating Electricity by Walking

Another artist, Kohei Hayamizu, used the piezoelectric tiles to generate electricity from the vibrations produced by cars and the steps of the pedestrians.
He placed his work in the Shibuya train station, one of the most crowded places in the world.
This project only stores energy and use it somewhere else (or only record it).

Here is more information about the piezoelectricity
Here is the article on OurWorld 2.0

11- Power form fabrics

This article talks about piezoelectric textiles. It is basically the same idea than the tiles, however it seems to be way more sensitive. It can generate power from people's walking, breathings, and even heartbeats.
It is a flexible fiber with zinc oxide nanowires that convert mechanical energy (like from our body) into electricity. The fibers should be able to record any kind of movement or vibration.

It could be very interesting to use, since it is very sensitive. I will look further to see where you can buy some and what is the price.

Here is a link to the article