SHE BON is a collection of wearable augments capable of sensing various forms of the wearer's bio-data as input, in order to indicate their level of arousal with electronic and mechanical devices as output!
I view SHE BON as my personal suite of amour that enhances my ability to express aspects of my physical state that might be subtle and thus go unnoticed.
By engineering personalized technology that expresses my sexual nature, I hope to encourage an honest and approachable discourse about human sexuality.
We should be more comfortable talking to one another about sexuality and intimacy. To help normalize a general dialogue about sex, I'm documenting the creation of a series of wearables that will act as a prosthesis for signaling my level of arousal.
I want the overall dialogue surrounding the project to be honest, accessible, and as open as possible. I encourage the exchange of thoughts and ideas, as well as participation.
I hope that if you choose to log and studying your own bio-feedback, the act of focusing attention on new aspects of your body will help you know yourself better than ever before.
I hope that if you choose to create your own wearable augmentation to indicate your physical status, you shed any stigma that may have ever been associated with communicating your sexual nature!
I want humanity to take ownership of its most basic right, and to illuminate shaming, victimizing, social taboo and stigma!
The creation of personal technology wont just make daily life more unique and memorable, it will encourage a shift in our values; something which will have a much larger impact on the world in the long run.
It may be an unpopular opinion in commercial-centric America; however, by shifting value away from homogenized technology onto the unique one-off innovations people in the hardware community are capable of making for themselves, humans can clamp down on habitual consumption and halt rampant throw-away culture. This is something our environment is in dire need of.
De-constructing Physical Sensation
All of these SHE BON devices begin with a discussion about a physical sensation and how it’s experienced by the body. After considering the nuance of an experience (like being squeezed, bitten, or sucked on for example), I’ll imagine a way to mechanically replicate the act with the goal of producing the same sensation.
Relating Cause and Effect
The essential part of every SHE BON augment is sensing input from the body. The way in which the devices communicate what it's sensing is a completely separate question to answer, but the method of sensing and the method of indicating do influence one another conceptually.
Inventing a Feedback Loop
Whatever device I create to reproduce the physical sensation will also become the method of indication regarding the effect it seeks to produce.
SHE BON Seen in the Wild:
Hackaday SuperCon | Pasadena, US | November 2019
Halloween on the Strip | Las Vegas, US | October 2019
What is humanity to spetku? Electronic lady-boners and robotic offspring, of course! Check out my other posthuman projects:
| V.1 completed : MAY 2019 |
The Suck Choker is device was created to simulate the sensation on has when they are having their neck sucked on and are about to receive a hickey!
A bank of motor driven syringes provides suction to a necklace of eight silicone cups at a rate that maps to the wearer's respiratory rate!
| V.1 completed : November 2018 |
The pop-girl is an arm-mounted user interface that helps me visualize the sensor data the Pulse Pack receives from the peripherals worn throughout my body!
This status indicator consists of a touch screen display, raspberry Pi zero, and other off-the shelf peripherals, all housed within a 3D printed retro style enclosure which I design specifically for the task.
Design files and build instructions are available on my blog for those who with to take a shot at replicating their own user interface!
| V.1 completed : October 2018 |
The Hot Spot mechanically replicates the sensation of a proper "tushie squeeze", while also achieving sufficient separation between the wearer's legs in order to produce "thigh gap"!
This device operates in relation to fluctuations in the user's body temperature between the thighs. A dual winch system worn over the hips, slowly begin to retract cables which are attached to the flesh of the user's thighs as their temperature climbs past a given threshhold.
Once the cables are retracted enough to create "gap"- a light will turn on and illuminate the negative space from behind; back-lighting the "hot spot".
| V. 1 completed : July 2018 |
The Propeller Pasties are devices which adhere to the breasts and contain an IR sensor, which tracks growth in the girth of the nipple. Fluctuation in size trigger propellers on the outside of the pasties to spin at a speed in relation to growth over time.
The three support gears that turn the central hub are modified with round internal "paddles" which stroke and knead the nipple as the propeller spins.
| POV MOD : March 2019 |
This iteration of the Propeller Pasties uses an IR distance sensor to detect fluctuations in nipple size in order to control the speed and message displayed on a propeller equipped with persistence of vision functionality.
| Pinwheel MOD : April 2019 |
These free-spinning pinwheels transfer their rotation inside the housing to small pom-poms which swirl around the areola. The color of the LEDs is controlled by a photo-resistor mounted below the pinwheel, the spinning of which blocks or allows the passage of light.
| V.1 completed : May 2018 |
The Beat Box is an enclosure which whispers nonsense into the wearer's pelvic bone at a volume equal to their heart rate.
This strip of material, resembling a fillet of salmon, is equipped with an SD card reader filled with recordings of dirty nonsense. The audio file is played through a speaker at a level equal to the beats per minute sensed by a heart rate sensor worn on the hand.
If the wearer's "BPM" is below a given threshold, the audio file is played at an inaudible volume, the can be felt by the wearer in the area of the body making contact to the speaker. At an elevated state, the whispers might become loud to enough to be heard by others nearby.
| V.1 completed : May 2018 |
The Pulse Pack is a wearable breakout board! It is the enclosure which houses the main brain and central processing unit of the SHE BON project, called the "PULSE".
There are (9) RJ45 jacks along the outside edge of the backpack for the various peripherals of the SHE BON project to plug into.
The primary function of this centrally located peripheral is to provide power to all of the various subsystems, and log the sensor values that devices receive so that this data can be reviewed at a later time.
De-constructing Physical Sensation
