Cat bag / cuddle bag
Made by Anouk Wipprecht, David Morgan (both Netherlands), Nick Lesley (New York) & Hans Gunter Lock (Estonia)
"We want to create a bag that can comfort you as a pet can do. The interaction is simple. You need to stroke the bag. The bag will then start breathing, it's heart will start beating, it will give off warmth and make soothing sounds. The thing is, you can not feel the heart, breath and heat unless you hold the bag close to your body. Perhaps, when you hit your bag it give more aggressive sound."
We wanted to make a prototype with a love material: a product that interacts with you - would give you love, that are sweet, breath, change, non-regular, Just like a pet. So you can 'bound' with your clothing. An feel good product. Doing great at stress situations, when you are alergic to animals, when you have an depression or after an break up. Something that you can can love out of when you're in need of it. That is alive, that makes a noise, that sqeeks, makes happy sounds, purr when you are stroking/petting it, let you know of it's excistence, blinks to you and give warmth and strenght.
Design
I made an subtile and simple but aerodynamic design for the bag that follows the shape of the body. Agily and stretchable, like a animal. And used an soft cotton fleece fabric to suggest an cat-like feeling.
Electronics
The electric connections that we integrated in the bag:
1. Two Lilypad Arduino vibro's for the purring effect (& programmed it on the normal Arduino first) - connected to each other by metallic thread - so it could make an connection. You can feel the vibration on your lab when rubbing the electronic pad (see #3)
2. Two blue L.A. LED's for the cat's eyes - & programmed it so it first shines soft and then getting brighter (lighting up & down) when you touch the bag.
3. One pad made out of conductive fabric (FlecTron) For this, I made two layers of fabric. One with three pieces conductive fabric that goes out to the Lilypad and underneath the other that excists of one layer. In between I used an combination of fleece & cotton jersey with holes in it. The holes give the fabric the opportunity to connect by touching each other when you rub against it.
4. An music connection that makes 'purring' and cat-like noises when 'petting' the bag!*
*For the tone/music part we needed another Lilypad Arduino, so in the bag we used 2 Arduino's in stead of one.
