tendrils: exploring the poetics of collective touch in wearable art

Abstract

This paper summarizes the artistic concepts underlying the design of tendrils, a responsive kinetic wearable art-work in the form of an interactive garment. The design process of tendrils is based in artistic exploration influenced by the somatic turn: an approach to designing for experience using embodied practice. Based on a somaesthetic framework for the design of expressive interaction [1], tendrils emphasizes four main concepts, 1) the experience of the sensory self, 2) design for poetics of interaction, 3) materiality based in soft-circuit design as well as the sensory materiality of the body, and 4) the computational semantics that supports sensory input and response through touch, both locally on the garment and collectively through iphone/ipod touch interaction. The tendrils artwork is described in terms of its concept, aesthetics and execution.