While making the further prototyping, we tried to form the initial wearable that we had as the idea. It was like a big collar, resembling the ornamental parts that can be found in nature. Paper was the first material that we choose to make the prototype, as it was easy to use, flexible and strong enough to hold everything together. Moreover, it was a good material that we can test the light with.
The process of making the prototype was like the photos above. We created a real-size prototype with LED stripes and modelled Fiona to test out how it looks. We were successful to find out the code of making the light works with our voice, and was ready for the mentoring session.
In the mentoring session, we had Verena to help us. It turned out that just visualising our voice with the help of light was not enough and seemed too static. Therefore we got the tip to work with Shape memory Alloy (Nitinol Metal), that “remembers” its original shape and that when deformed returns to its pre_deformed shape when heated.
Therefore we are motivated to work with SMA Metal. Unfortunately, it turns out that they are not easy to get and hope strongly that it will not fail. We were quite disappointed that we couldn’t find the material that we needed in our school. Anyway, our new idea is to design an Anemone based organism out of bendable silicone, equipped with an LED, that dynamically changes according to our voice speed and volume.
Embodied Interaction 