Captain Electric and Battery Boy refers to an ongoing research project that aims to develop electronic garments and wearable artifacts that harness power from the body and use that energy to actuate co-located electronic components. This paper will discuss two initial stages of the collaborative design process, which led to concepts and prototypes that seamlessly integrate technical constraints within design aesthetics. The first stage took place during a winter 2008 design course where students were presented with a brief to create an artifact for Human-Powered Illumination. The second consisted of a two-week intensive workshop with a selection of the original students, held in the summer of 2008 at XS Labs. Finally, we will briefly present the final outcome.

We present Senspectra, a computationally augmented physical modeling toolkit designed for sensing and visualization of structural strain. Senspectra seeks to explore a new direction in computational materiality, incorporating the material quality of malleable elements of an interface into its digital control structure. The system functions as a decentralized sensor network consisting of nodes, embedded with computational capabilities and a full spectrum LED, and flexible joints. Each joint functions as an omnidirectional bend sensing mechanism to sense and communicate mechanical strain between neighboring nodes.