Monarch: Self-expression through wearable kinetic textiles

Monarch is a wearable and muscle-activated kinetic textile. It consists of textile forms attached to the shoulders that expand and contract in response to the movement of the wearer's muscles. By physically extending natural body language, Monarch explores how wearable technologies can be used as a form of personal expression, as well as how and when they can begin to feel like a visceral extension of self

DIY Methods 2022 Conference Proceedings

As the past years have proven, the methods for conducting and distributing research that we’ve inherited from our disciplinary traditions can be remarkably brittle in the face of rapidly changing social and mobility norms. The ways we work and the ways we meet are questions newly opened for practical and theoretical inquiry; we both need to solve real problems in our daily lives and account for the constitutive effects of these solutions on the character of the knowledge we produce. Methods are not neutral tools, and nor are they fixed ones. As such, the work of inventing, repairing, and hacking methods is a necessary, if often underexplored, part of the wider research process. This conference aims to better interrogate and celebrate such experiments with method. Borrowing from the spirit and circuits of exchange in earlier DIY cultures, it takes the form of a zine ring distributed via postal mail. Participants will craft zines describing methodological experiments and/or how-to guides, which the conference organisers will subsequently mail out to all participants. Feedback on conference proceedings will also proceed through the mail, as well as via an optional Twitter hashtag. The conference itself is thus an experiment with different temporalities and medialities of research exchange. As a practical benefit, this format guarantees that the experience will be free of Zoom fatigue, timezone difficulties, travel expenses, and visa headaches. More generatively, it may also afford slower thinking, richer aesthetic possibilities, more diverse forms of circulation, and perhaps even some amount of delight. The conference format itself is part of the DIY experiment

Monarch 2 : An Iterative Design Approach to Prototyping a Wearable Electronics Project

Monarch is a wearable electronics prototype that enables the wearer to amplify or extend body language through the use of a muscle-activated kinetic textile for the purpose of augmented social interaction. This pictorial details the second prototype stage with a focus on addressing the wearability [5,14], technical, and production challenges resulting from the first prototype [7]. The purpose of these improvements is to enable a small batch production of the prototype for further testing in daily life. Design decisions are brought to the foreground for observation and reflection, including those surrounding material choices and production methods. The result is a detailed visual account of the generative and evaluative discoveries [12] as well as a contribution of several recommendations that can be applied to small batch production of wearable electronic prototypes in a research lab context