2016
Social8
Responsive, soft-robotic tentacle dress.
00 / Summary
'Social8' was an experimental wearable, exploring physical contact and social augmentation; a social interface with four soft-robotic appendages. The garment invited and altered physical contact, functioning as a social insurgent.
01 / Conceptualization
Zoomorphic apprehensions & affordances
A major early reference was Anouk Wipprecht’s Spider Dress projects (anoukwipprecht.nl), whose moving, robotic appendages define and defend the wearer’s personal space. We imagined some of our early concepts as having similar mechanisms and objectives as the spider dresses. We too sought to augment a person with the abilities and apprehensions associated with an animal; an octopus in our case.
Our concept evolved into a social surrogate that invites interaction, touch, and the presence of others into the wearer's personal space. Instead of reinforcing distance, the tentacles became social agents: extensions designed to increase intimacy rather than restrict it. Drawing on the octopus as a model for expressive, bodily augmentation, the project shifted from apprehension toward contact.
What began as a wearable that might reinforce personal space became one that tried to break it open.
02 / Prototyping
Soft and sociable
We deliberately hid the electronics and mechanics underneath a layer of soft foam and smooth fabric. Only the ‘tendon’ of each arm was left perceivable by touch. For the observer of our dress, it is soft and squishy, like a teddy bear. We hid the mechanical aspects of our dress to abolish the associations to machines that Wipprecht embraces, in favour of associations to more readily touched and embraced objects, such as soft toys and cushions.
Material details and prototype dynamics
Inspired by the decentralized nervous system of octopi, each arm was designed to be autonomous, with its own Arduino “brain” and electric motor “muscles”. Though unified under bright blue fabric, the arms' were designed as a set of distinct behavioural agents, each with unique response behaviour, rather than a single unified mechanism.
The foam tentacles were inlaid with primitive capacitive sensors; touching the tentacle caused immediate movement, intended to make the arms feel less like props and more like responsive, semi-living extensions.
Prototype socket w/ driver and logic board
03 / the Artifact
social interaction made physical and playful
Built as a dress with four soft-robotic appendages, using touch-sensitive arms to invite, resist, or hold physical contact. The project began with an interest in wearables and bodily augmentation, but developed into an investigation of how clothing, robotics, and zoomorphic dynamics might change the way people approach one another in public. The result was a playful, strange, and social “interface”.
05 / Additional media
