The Empathy Amulet is a wearable interpretation of Philip K. Dick's empathy box from his novel Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep? [3]. In the novel, thousands of people were anonymously connected with each other both haptically and emotionally when they grabbed the handles of their empathy boxes. The Empathy Amulet similarly networks a group of strangers together through shared experiences of physical warmth. It is not yet another technology for staying in touch with people you already know (and falling short). Rather, it encourages its wearer to make a deliberate and generous choice to invest their time and energy in connection with strangers, and it incorporates reciprocity into its design, such that helping oneself means helping other people. In today's world, people are less likely to feel empathy towards those not in their immediate network of family and friends, and, despite a proliferation of connective technologies, loneliness is on the rise [2, 5]. Surprisingly, it is the perceived sense of loneliness, and not actually being physically alone that has numerous health consequences for a significant portion of the population. Lakoff and Johnson's theory of embodied mind asserts that our physical and subjective experiences are inextricably linked, and the Empathy Amulet leverages the powerful connection between the physical experience of warmth and the subjective experience of social connectedness to combat loneliness and cultivate a stronger sense of connection with strangers [1, 4].

The Embodisuit allows its wearer to map signals onto different places on their body. Informed by embodied cognition, the suit receives signals from an IoT platform, and each signal controls a different haptic actuator on the body. Knowledge is experienced ambiently without necessitating the interpretation of symbols by the conscious mind. The suit empowers wearers to reconfigure the boundaries of their selves strengthening their connection to the people, places, and things that are meaningful to them. It both critiques and offers an alternative to current trends in wearable technology. Most wearables harvest data from their users to be sent and processed elsewhere. The Embodisuit flips this paradigm such that data is taken in through the body instead. Furthermore, we believe that by changing the way people live with data, it will change the type of data that people create.

The Embodisuit allows its wearer to map signals onto different places on their body. Informed by embodied cognition, the suit receives signals from an IoT platform, and each signal controls a different haptic actuator on the body. Knowledge is experienced ambiently without necessitating the interpretation of symbols by the conscious mind. The suit empowers wearers to reconfigure the boundaries of their selves strengthening their connection to the people, places, and things that are meaningful to them. It both critiques and offers an alternative to current trends in wearable technology. Most wearables harvest data from their users to be sent and processed elsewhere. The Embodisuit flips this paradigm such that data is taken in through the body instead. Furthermore, we believe that by changing the way people live with data, it will change the type of data that people create.

In this studio, we will improve our tailoring skills in order to better integrate technology into clothing. Leveraging the volumetric nature of clothing, we will create eTextile interfaces that fit the shape of the body and are designed around how bodies move. This studio will consist of a short masterclass led by an expert fashion designer followed by materials experimentation and working on individual projects. We will introduce and demo a variety of ways to design and implement 3-dimensional eTextiles as well as how to integrate them with interactive systems.