wearables

Augmented Animal, 2001
Auger and Loizeau imagine technologies that assist squirrels in finding food, protect rodents from predators, and help dogs adapt to the restrictions of domestic life. In one scenario, a dog’s tail communicates her emotional state with the help of LED text. Phrases like “I’d like my dinner” or “I really love you” appear when the dog wags her tail. In another scenario, a squirrel records the GPS location of a buried nut using a device attached to his wrist. When he needs to retrieve the nut, a red light flashes on the wrist device indicating the exact location of his stash. A third scenario gives night vision goggles to a rodent, helping her avoid predators who hunt in low light.¹

See Auger’s website.

¹ Paola Antonelli, ed., Design and the Elastic Mind (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 35.

Animal Superpowers, 2008
Animal Superpowers is a collection of wearables designed to help humans experience life from an ant’s, bird’s, or giraffe’s view. The ant wearable is best experienced by crawling on the ground. Two cameras attached to the hands send images to a display worn on your head. As you move around on all fours, you see the world from a low camera angle, close to the ground. The video image is also significantly scaled up, making small objects appear very large. Blades of grass become arboreal. The giraffe wearable adds height by mounting a periscope extension to the top of a your head. The device also lowers your voice’s pitch to match your increased size. And the bird wearable guides you along a path with feedback provided by a vibrating headband. Just as birds sense geomagnetic fields to help them migrate, your headband’s vibrations tell you which way to turn to find your way home.

See Woebken’s website.

JAMES AUGER and JIMMY LOIZEAU

CHRIS WOEBKEN and KENICHI OKADA