Inflatable Pajama
Introduction
This is an offshoot of the DayDreamNight project. DayDreamNight was a gathering organized for the MIT community to explore projects produced in collaboration between CAST Visiting Artist Carsten Höller and MIT’s Fluid Interfaces group. Dream-altering toothpaste, inflatable pajamas, a live sleeper and more were there for people to experience.
Sleep science has told us the sleeping body is discontinuous with the dreaming body. But this is not so. In fact, while we dream, we feel both our bodies at once. These inflatable pajamas are built to exert pressure on specific points of the legs and arms during REM sleep to change dream content. Listen to the audio dream report from a sleeper who had pressure applied on the right calf during REM sleep. Listen for the octopus. (The experiment was done by Adam.)
Research Collaborate Project
Collaborator
Dr. Adam Haar Horowitz, Fluid Interfaces group
My Skills
Inflatable structure design
Apparel design
Inflatable Pajama Exposure
MIT Media Lab Dream Hotel Project
MIT Media Lab DayDreamNight Project
Adam Haar Horowitz PhD thesis, p157
Tech Research
Shape-Changing Material
The aeroMorph project investigates how to make origami structures with inflatables with various materials. It is a universal bending mechanism that creates programmable shape-changing behaviors with paper, plastics, and fabrics.
Pneumatics platform
FlowIO is the first fully-integrated and truly general-purpose, miniature pneumatics development platform for control, actuation, and sensing of soft robots and programmable materials.
Pattern Research - Biomimicry
The pneumatic principle is a reference to the aeroMorph project. All I had to do was design a pattern that would create a different sense of touch when the pajamas were deformed. The pattern is inspired by the surface of a natural creature, a starfish. The surface of the starfish gives a soft feeling. The feeling of five feelers gently surrounding your skin. That moist, slippery, soft feeling. I want to use this graphic to make pajamas -- to create an Ocean Experience. In addition, because the surface is all grain by grain, I also want to express the feeling of a worm crawling on your skin.
Inflatable Pattern Design
Prototypes
After exploring inflatable patterns, I settled on the third one -- because it's more regular and easier to make. (Unfortunately, due to the limitation of time, resources, and production tools, I did not compare and test the tactile experience brought by different patterns)
Below is the pajama made from Vinyl. The sleeve in the first figure 1 is black because I added a layer of regular fabric to the vinyl -- to explore how to make the inflatable pajama look like regular clothing. If you want to understand the sandwich structure of the inflatable garment, check out the Inflatable Suit project.
Daydream Night
Inflatable Pajama and six other projects about dreams and sleep are on display at MIT Museum Studio on May 4th at 6 pm to 8 pm.
Other sleeping projects at the show
Space-time Modulator II
Light interacting with holographic materials
creates dream-like experiences of space and time.
Regenbogenraster
Regenbogenraster is a reverse camera obsura, as if dreamt from the sleeper’s head.
