This was my final project for ARTS101 at UIC, Introduction to Interactive Arts.

Concept: Stress scarf. As you stretch your arms or fidget in a display of anxiety or stress, the meter on the left side of the scarf lights up according to your level of stress.

Designed and constructed by me using a Lilypad Arduino microcontroller, conductive thread and mini LEDs.

Err.. I realize the video is sideways. it wasn’t til afterwards i found out you couldn’t flip a video really.. let’s call it artsy? :]

It took a few tries before I was able to make a stretch sensor that worked. Here’s a photo of some of my earlier versions (it didn’t really work). These were made using conductive thread in a sewing machine with zigzag stitches.

My final stretch sensor was made by hand-stitching loose “X’s” on a thin piece of elastic. As the elastic is stretched, the crosses of the X’s touch and increase the resistance registered by the Arduino.