Most of us realize when we are slouching, but do we know when we are being closed in our body language? This is a curiosity for Isabel Andersson, MFA student at Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden. She has been investigating the use of wearables to re-create or recognize types of movements. One of her projects that I find particularly interesting is her Express prototype. It uses elastic fabric in combination with an Adafruit Flora microcontroller to sense a particular open position. Isabel worked on creating her own sensor that functions by pulling apart two areas.

Interestingly, she chose to have a vibration motor worn at the ear as a form of response to the correct movement. Here’s how she describes the effect of the project:

This prototype is about opening up our body language to the surrounding and build a confident ground in yourself. At the same time it gives your back a stretch, making you relaxed and calm as extending our body language into power poses decreases your cortisol level (your stress hormone) making you more present and in the moment.

This shirt explores how the physical brings about the emotional response and Isabel’s other projects work  in a similar fashion. You can check out her other prototypes which explore spine tingles, raindrops and spontaneity. All of these projects lend themselves to dance and therapy, yet they also might be handy for VR or gaming. Exploring the connections between body and mind is fascinating. If you would like to use a microcontroller for similar body work, definitely look at our Flora microcontroller. It’s small with a low profile and it’s able to handle connections with conductive thread or solder. Flora’s matching sensors can also explore things like light, color, movement and GPS location. So, what do you want to learn about your body?

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!