Week 9- Lead up to Dress Rehearsal

 IN CLASS:

We showed off our video evidence of the suit triggering the sounds and the kinect motion trackers working at the same time.  Paul emphasized that we needed more complete visuals and effects on our virtual stage, so we gotta get that working.  My priority is of course to get the suit done.

THIS WEEK: 

FRIDAY (3/8):

I met with Cindy and Preeti in the Glitch Lab from 2pm to 6pm to get as much done on the bodysuit as possible, since it's my primary responsibility.  The beautiful and talented Lauren came by and dropped of the new rolls of conductive tape around 2:30pm so we were finally able to continue covering the suit with lines!  Hooray!

ATTACHING THE WIRES TO THE SUIT

I was alone from 2pm to 3pm, just working on stitching the wires that connect to the arms into the interior of the suit.  I did my best to conceal them along the seams of the suit, and underneath other lines of conductive tape where they had to branch away from the seams.  It takes a stupidly long time to stitch them in, since it primarily consists of tacking the wires down in many many individual spots along the arm to allow the arm to stretch as Cindy moves.  It's very difficult to position the length of the completely inelastic wire adequately within the very stretchy spandex of the bodysuit, since it has to have sufficient slack in the wire for the arm to fully extend and move, but shouldn't have so much wire hanging free that it there's a danger of the wire catching on Cindy's fingers and getting ripped out as she puts it on.  I poked the ends of the wire through the fabric of the bodysuit itself by threading it through the eye of an embroidery needle and then carefully tugging it through.  I then taped the exposed length of wire directly underneath a length of conductive tape so that it will hopefully pick up the conductivity, but also be smoothly concealed and look all neat.   There are six wires total inside the arms, one for each hand, forearm, and upper arm, which make up half of the touch section zones on the entire suit, since I assumed touching or manipulating Cindy's arms would be the thing participants would be most likely to do first.

DECORATING THE SUIT

Cindy and Preeti showed up around 3pm and we got to work on adding the conductive tape to the shoulders, chest, and stomach.  As previously, I tried to make it difficult to spot the delineations between each section using the asymmetrical circuitboard pattern in order to maintain an element of mystique.  I don't want people to be able to look at the suit and clearly say to themselves "oh, that's the boob part.  I have to be very careful to touch only the waist part and not the boob part", I want them to organically accidentally interact with different sections.  I want people to interact with our "puppet" more naturally, and be thinking about their own discomfort with touching her, which is the focus of the project, not getting distracted by wondering how the whole thing works under the hood. 

Preeti is an angel and helped cover the shoulder blades while I did the chest, stomach, and lower back.  As a result, Preeti's section is a little denser than the lines on the rest of the suit, but if anything that just makes the shoulders look like a highlighted area, which works well for our purposes.  By the end of the day, we had 8 of the 12 sections fully covered, with just the butt, thighs, and two lower legs left to go.

Completed chest & stomach sections

Shoulder and back sections

As you can see, the wires for the back and chest sections were still taped to the exterior of the suit at this point as they had not yet been sewn in.  You can see where the wires emerge at the base of the zipper, each labelled with a piece of tape stating which body part they correspond to so that they can be connected to the capacitive touch sensor in the correct order.  All the wires for the arms are blue, and the ones for the rest of the suit are yellow.

SATURDAY (3/9): 

The team met in the motion capture studio today from 1pm to 7pm.  Vivian, Cindy and I worked on the bodysuit until all of the tape sections were FINALLY done!!   The sections we did today were the butt/crotch, thighs, left lower leg and right lower leg.  The 

Front of the legs and thighs

Back of the legs and thighs

We also touched up some areas on the chest, shoulders, and stomach to make sure they were all divided correctly and adequately covered.  I also seam ripped out the conductive thread I stitched in two weeks ago, since we concluded that going with wires would be more reliable.  It's worth noting that the conductive thread left a little bit of silver residue on the suit where it had been stitched in, so be aware of that if you're going to use and then remove conductive thread in your own project- it leaves a bit of a stain.

Front of fully decorated suit

Back of fully decorated suit

At this stage, I still hadn't sewn in all the wires, as you can see in the picture.  Each has been cut to the correct length and labelled with masking tape so as not to get confused.  Tomorrow will be my sewing day.

SUNDAY (3/10): 

I worked on the suit from 6pm-12:30am today.  Six and a half hours of stitching those dang wires in!! Exhausting!!  It's so difficult to measure out where exactly they need to be tacked down so that they don't get ripped apart as the suit stretches but also don't leave a whole bunch of slack wire that could get snagged on a foot or hand while Cindy dresses and ALSO subsequently get ripped out.  Arg!!

Suit turned inside out, wires visible

Closer photo of how arm wires are sewn in

 MONDAY (3/11):

TODAY WAS THE BIG DRESS REHEARSAL!!! I spent the morning double checking all the wires and then headed in to the lab to hand over the suit to Captain Vivian before thesis class.  Continued in separate Dress Rehearsal post!