Augmented Body Project

Introduction:

For this project, we were tasked with designing “wearable, physical artifacts” that affects one’s senses “through amplification, dampening, distortion, isolation, etc. to have an impact on the wearer’s perception” in the context of nature.

Brain-Stormed Ideas:

• Design something that covers the ears to block out industrial sounds while in Schenley Park
• Gloves that distort/dampen sense of touch
• Shoes that the feet hang over the edge of to disrupt balance+create unease

I decided to go with the “cliff shoe” idea because I want to do something that involves the sense of touch/lack of touch. I also already did a project on sound last semester and want to try working with a different sense.

Initial Research:

I tried to make a pair of cliff shoes out of books that I taped to my feet and from walking around in them, I can say that there was definitely a sense of uneasiness felt from the front/ balls of my feet not touching anything. Balancing was much more difficult because I had to rely on the heels and middle parts of my foot for balance. I kept stumbling and taking small steps because it was easier for me to feel the books touch the ground. It also hurt to have the middle part of my foot along the edge of the books which wasn't pleasant.

Prototype:

I made a scaled down prototype from materials I found around the house. My roommates and I have a lot of cardboard boxes and plastic packaging right now because we just moved in to our house so I used these things to make my model. I plan on using the same materials to make my final model because the plastic packaging is fairly sturdy for sandal straps and the cardboard is easy to cut. Making the small model helped me to understand what the shoes would look like and how much material I would need to make them. I made the shoe extend

Feedback:

In class I got feedback from our professor and from our classmates. Overall, people thought that the idea was interesting and liked how I interpreted touch, but my professor suggested that I make multiple shoe designs to how shifting the balance affected how people walked in the shoes. She also suggested I take note of how sense of sight/ what people looked at was affected. She believed that the shoes would cause people to look more at the ground.

Balance as a Sense:

When I first started this project, I assumed that balance was a combination of the three senses: touch, hearing, and sight, but then I learned that although balance can be affected by the other senses, it is a sense of it’s own. Sense of balance is called equilibrioception and relies on the vestibular system of the ear, proprioceptive input from muscles and joints, and visual input from the eyes to occur.

When the head moves fluid inside of the vestibular tubes/semicircular canals of the inner ear also moves sending signals to the brain on the spatial orientation of the head. While the vestibular tubes are very close to the organ that receives sound in the ear, they connect to different nerves and send different information to the brain.

Visual input from the eyes helps inform the body on its position in space. Vestibule-ocular reflex is a product of the vestibular system working with the eyes to allow the eyes to be stabilized during movement so that a person’s vision doesn’t blur and can continue to focus on things in space.

Sensors of the the muscles and tendons located in the legs, feet, chest and shoulders are part of the proprioceptive system and help the brain to know where body parts are in relation to the ground and each other.

A person is sometimes able to regain balance having lost the ability to receive input from one of the 3 components. A person who is deaf or blind can learn to rely on their other 2 inputs for balance, but I’m not certain if full balance can be regained when proprioception is lost. I think that this is interesting because with the five main senses they occur in one organ and when that organ loses its sensory function, it can’t be regained through the body relearning how to interpret the sense from another organ. Balance is more of a whole body experience so it makes sense that input would be received from multiple parts of the body.

My Goal:

With my new knowledge on balance and my feedback from class, I plan on continuing to make my shoes because of how they would affect the proprioceptive system in relation to balance. By making multiple types of shoes I can see how the body responds to different proprioceptive input from the feet. I‘ll be looking at posture, direction of gaze and head (based on feedback), and ease of movement/speed in order to assess how each shoe impacts the user’s balance. My goal is to design differnt shoe forms to create unnatural relationships between the foot and the ground causing imbalance and disrupting one’s ability to experience the natural surroundings using the other senses.

Final Shoe Designs:

Design 1:

I made this shoe to demonstrate the lack of reliance on the middle section of the foot for balancing. I completely removed the middle section of the shoe and left support areas for the balls and heels of the feet so that the two main supports of the foot would be in contact with flat surface. I also made the soles of the shoes shorter in comparison to the other shoe designs so that the feet would be closer to the ground making it easier for the user to balance as well.

Impact:

• normal paced movement
• comfort
• more observation of surrounding/looking up compared to other shoes

Design 2:

I made these shoes because I know from my past experiences with running that the most stable way to walk or run is using the center of the foot rather than the inside or outside part. These shoes force the user to shift their balance to the outside of the foot and turn their ankles slightly outward for balance. I also noticed that it caused the foot to turn outwards as well possibly to allow more control over the outer foot .

Impact:

• slowed movement
• wider stance
• smaller steps
• frequently looking down
• outward turned feet

Design 3:

This shoe is the cliff shoe that I prototyped. The toes hang over the front causing the user to have to lean backwards and rely on mainly the balls of the feet for support while wearing the shoes in order to maintain balance. These shoes elevate the user the furthest from the ground meaning that the user has to consciously take larger steps in order to not trip since they can’t sense where the bottom of the shoes are as well in relation to the ground.

Impact:

• slowed movement
• wider stance
• frequently looking down
• tripping
• toe wiggling
• farther+taller steps
• outward turned feet

Design 4:

This design was a more extreme version of the third design/the original cliff shoes. I removed the front and back supports of the shoe and left a middle arch to hang over so that the user only could rely on the center of the foot for balance which is normally not used.

Impact:

• slowed movement
• wider stance
• frequently looking down
• tripping
• toe wiggling
• discomfort/pain in the middle of foot

Final Video:

Take Aways:

I’m still not certain on where balance stands in terms of whether it is a sense outside of the five main senses or if it is formed by the five main senses. Based on what was said in class for the project take aways I would say that it isn’t an extra sense, but some of the components that make up balance aren’t caused by one of the five senses. The vestibular system may be in the ear, it is not used to transmit sound signals to the brain. The proprioceptive system does seem like it could be part of the body’s sense of touch and I consider it to be because it relies on contact between different parts of the body and objects/surfaces. However, if it is part of what makes touch, then why isn’t there any variation in feeling with it. Although I still have questions about what makes a sense a sense, I feel like I learned a lot from this project about how different senses and components of a sense come together to create feelings that can alter how we feel about the environment we’re in. For example, in my project, sensory components of balance made users uneasy and wary about their contact with the ground.

In class we also discussed how some senses aren’t all felt equally at the any given time. We live in a very visually communicative world which causes a people to forget to use their other senses for interaction. By designing for the other senses it can help immerse a person in the experience you want them to be in. At the same time, overwhelming a person with too many senses or too much of a sensory input can become a headache and completely detract from the experience.