Workshop Super heroines archetype – Experimenting with body and technologies

Lab for experimentation with biophysical sensors interconnecting electronic circuits and the human body. Construction of do-it-yourself “super-powers” accessories.

Supermother, superprofessional, supergirlfriend … If you could use superpowers, what would they be? What superheroine are you? The activity proposes to build accessories that augment our perceptions and expand our superpowers through the conversion of body data captured by biophysical sensors transformed into audiovisual material.

The proposal is to know a little more about how our bodies work and to discover the superpowers that already exist inside us, with a bit of fantasy. For this the dynamics of classes had theoretical part inside the prototyping laboratory.

The theoretical part focused on the sensors used: e-health platform of Cooking Hacks (biofeedback sensor kit including EKG, Oximeter, Respiratory Flow, Pulse Sensor (Live Heartbeats / BPM ); Accelerometer MMA8452Q; DataLogger; LED RGB; Piezo Element LM35 Temperature Sensor, TTL Serial JPEG Camera, DataLogger and Buzzer.

By assimilation, if we use something to listen, we study how we listen; To use something that depends on vision, like the LED, or to simulate it, like the camera, we study how we see and color spectra; we also studied how external sensors work in relation to our bodies, how sensors work and how to analyze their data.

The program had the super special participation of Jaime Alonso Lobato Cardoso, Thaís De Almeida Prado, & Mateus Knelsen

CLASSES PLANNING

Class 1
Introduction
Presentation of the lesson plan
References
SoftCircuits
Biosensors
Where to buy the materials?

Class 2
Input x output
Arduino, electronics and coding
Sensors available for class
Exercise 1: Plan your project as free and playful as possible

Class 3
Exercise 2: plan circuits – discuss in group
Exercise 3: circuit assembly
External Batteries & Power Supplies

Class 4
Continuation Exercise 3
Special guest: Thais de Almeida Prado: how does an expanded body moves? Interactions between silicon body and carbon body

Class 5
Finalizing projects
Testing of clothing with corporeal possibilities

Class 6
Adjust the final projects
Presentation / demonstration of clothing / superpowers

THEORETICAL REFERENCIES

Brief Introduction to Biosignals
Biosensors – Open Access Journal
Biosensors – Emerging Materials and Applications
Edited by Pier Andrea Serra, ISBN 978-953-307-328-6, Hard cover, 630 pages, Publisher: InTech, Published: July 18, 2011 under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license – DOI: 10.5772/672
Intelligent and Biosensors
Edited by Vernon S. Somerset, ISBN 978-953-7619-58-9, Hard cover, 386 pages, Publisher: InTech, Published: January 01, 2010 under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license – DOI: 10.5772/45618

Viseu, A., (2002). Augmented Bodies and Behavior Bias Interfaces. Paper presented at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Milwaukee, US. November 7-10.

Hayles, N. Katherine. How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. The University of Chicago Press, 1999

O.B. Hardison Jr., Disappearing through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century (New York: Viking, 1989)

Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies : toward a corporeal feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994)

Barfield, W. & Caudell, T. (2001). Basic Concepts in Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality. In Barfield, Woodrow & Caudell, Thomas, Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality (pp. 3-26). Mahwan, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.