My collection is a comment on the passive indoor consumption of electronics.
Screen based media are available 24 hours, and young children are bombarded with all kinds of blunt visuals. Somehow the stimulus to use imagination, which is connected with creativity seems excluded during the consumption of all those images. I think we should invest in their imagination, if we want our children to challenge the problems of the future, and to develop creative, innovative, and sustainable solutions. My interactive collection is a comment on the passive indoor consumption of electronics. It is an attempt to encourage children to play outdoors, using electronics differently, and to be imaginative most and for all.
A Fantasy Story
To give the collection a connecting thread I decided to create a fantasy story together with the children.
In my futuristic journey I am introducing four different persona's each representing one of my jacket’s. The electronics is based on the characteristic of the persona's and the story.
In co-creation we produced a number of different collages using color & shape as the main ingredients. I selected four collages as a point of departure to design my collection. I wanted to suggest a space story but leave it open for the imagination of the child to flow. This I tested with other children, showing the collages and some did not even think about space but skiing, special rain clothes etc.
Each piece has a function that the children can talk to the jackets with each other on a distance though radio waves.
Each piece has audio, trigged though different sensors (tilt, temperature, light, bend zipper etc.). The jackets detect each other through the easy radio module. This module send's and detects data.
Every jacket has a different output as reaction based on their persona. Dinth has audio as output, harken - vibration, Abu - LED's and Sulcar - neo pixels. The idea is that through the output you can see which jacket is close before you actually see the jacket.
Read more about Anna's research here