invented by Danielle Wilde
The hipDisk is a self-contained wearable system that augments the body with instrumental capabilities. By placing the hip and torso in extreme opposition the wearer of hipDisk can trigger simple tones within a one-octave chromatic scale, so as to play tunes or melodies.
Key features include two disks, attached to the wearer’s body – one above the waist, one below; twelve custom made soft contact switches that represent twelve notes on a chromatic scale, spread evenly around the perimeter of the inner face of each of the disks; and microcontroller generated audio tones, output through a speaker discretely positioned in the upper garment of the wearer.
About the Inventor
Danielle Wilde is an artist researcher based in Melbourne, Australia, investigating how technology might be paired with the body to poeticise experience. She creates wearable interfaces and body extensions that inspire people to move. The aim is to illicit deep emotional responses and to prod people to consider their relationships to their bodies and technology in society.
Wilde has an MA in Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art in London and a large body of work that encompasses wearable interactive interfaces, performance, installation, still and moving image, design for theatre and architecture, documentary film research, large and small scale project management, and interaction design.
Born in Wollongong Australia, Danielle lived from 1994 to 2006 in Paris, New York, San Francisco, London, Marseille and Wallau (Lahn), Germany. Danielle’s work has been shown in galleries, museums, festivals, conferences and performance venues around the world.
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Hipdisk was developed for a wearable technologies lab that Danielle was a part of. While considering what she was going to make Danielle went for a swim. Like many people, she has a personal, somewhat idiosyncratic swimming style. As she extends her arms forward, when swimming freestyle, and turns her head to breathe, she rolls her hips and torso in opposition and support of the rotation of her head. This motion is technically unrefined but is particularly pleasing kinaesthetically to Danielle. While counting laps and vaguely considering the conundrum with which she was faced, she found herself focusing on the physical pleasure she was experiencing through this extended rotation of hip and torso. This raised the question: ‘If a single-axis exploration was inappropriate for the intended presentation context’, and it seemed only natural to shift the focus to an investigation of a more fundamental, dynamic and fuller-body movement, ‘why not shift the focus to the changing relationship between hip and torso?’
Different parts of our bodies have varying degrees of freedom. The relationship between the hip and torso is particularly dynamic, as this area of the body allows movement on its axes in a relatively unconstrained fashion. It also provides a fundamental reflection of core strength and flexibility. Danielle’s ongoing research aim is to explore how technology might be paired with the body to poeticise experience. To explore this idea Danielle tries to create wearable interactive interfaces that inspire people to move and that by doing so trigger and stimulate different emotions.
By the inventor’s own admission the hipDisk is an undignified musical instrument.
hipDisk was designed to inspire people to swing their hips and explore and extend the full range of movement available to them through a simultaneous, interdependent exploration of sound. In creating hipDisk, the objective was to move beyond limb and digit-triggered switches and explore full-body movement for actuation. The resulting body instrument interconnects choreography and composition in a fundamental way.
hipDisk sits within a broader research framework that explores the role of a poetic approach in the design of interactive interfaces, ranging from abstracted prosthetics through to invisible, virtual systems. This broader research targets not only sound output systems but also systems for the output of changes in colour, light and shape.
The hipDisk creates a link between body motion and sound production, which cannot be ignored when composing or performing. The interface also raises questions about the role of physical affordance, extension and abstraction in the development of wearable elements and systems, and suggests that a focus on these issues can lead to novel yet meaningful applications of technology.
In order to explore the changing dynamic between hip and torso, a pair of disks – one attached to the hip and one attached to the torso above the waist, were created. The aim was to make this dynamic relationship highly visible and so provide an input that was easy for the viewer to ‘read’. Twelve simple, soft, digital switches were then
positioned at equidistant intervals around the perimeter of the disks – one part of each switch on the upper disk, the complementary part of the switch on the lower.
The switches could then be activated when the corresponding parts of the upper and lower disks connected, as achieved through bending the body at the waist.
Danielle’s wanted to create a system that could be played by a novice, yet through mastery, allow greater complexity. It is Danielle’s impression that this quality is intrinsic to many musical instruments comparing it to that of a recorder. Novices can play simple tunes on a recorder yet an entire canon of highly complex and beautiful music exists for the same instrument.
The sounds output by hipDisk are simple tones created digitally by the Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller, triggered by a series of twelve custom-built soft switches, amplified, and then output through a simple speaker mounted into the bodice of the costume of the wearer. The entire system is self-contained.
Rhythm of desired output is also closely linked to core strength and flexibility – the tempo of the produced melodies are limited only by the wearer’s ability to move from one position to another.
Though hipDisk was designed specifically to inspire people to swing their hips and explore and extend the full range of movement available to them, the physical repercussions of this were not fully understood in advance. It was only after public presentation of the interface that this became apparent.
Despite the fact that hipDisk does not appear as an exercise interface, the performer’s focus on doing whatever is necessary to achieve the desired sound output seems to extend, over time, the body’s capabilities to do so. As a result, core strength and flexibility are positively affected through an extension of the outer limits of the wearer’s physical capabilities. The hipDisk thus provides surprising, yet not undesirable health enhancing aspects for the wearer.
In addition, use of the interface seems to be highly compelling for audiences.
The ungainly manner of physical input necessary to achieve what could only be considered quite primitive audio output seems humorous and compelling. The fact that, when wearing the interface, the wearer is compelled to smile broadly, continuously, throughout their performance – as if experiencing unrestrained enjoyment – captures people’s attention and prompts them to smile in return. Finally, the rings, and the associated movement, are reminiscent of a hula hoop – a device common to many from their childhood or from going to the circus. While this does not necessarily compel people to want to use the hipDisk, it certainly seems to trigger deep-seated memories of times past and physical immersion that are pleasurable to revisit even if only vicariously.
Quote of the Week
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." - musical innovator John Cage