Wetsuit — PROJECTS

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TEI Paper: Wetsuit

Research Dossier: Air, Body, Apparatus

Wetsuit as a Sensing System: E-Textile Interface

Creative code scripts for crochet developed with Felix Loftus.
2024-2026

Wetsuit E-Textile Interface re-engineers a neoprene wetsuit from passive sportswear into a functional sensing system. Conductive pathways and bend-responsive zones turn the garment itself into the interface — registering how the body articulates at the shoulders, scapulae and back. Recorded movement is reduced to three values — bend intensity, frequency and asymmetry — and a rule-based workflow translates those into derived garments and carrying objects. The same wetsuit that senses movement becomes the morphological base for what it produces.

01 · The reframing Most wearable tech bolts sensors onto clothing. This project asks the opposite: can the garment be the sensor? A close-fitting wetsuit — compressive, body-mapped, technical — is treated as a sensing body and a starting form, not a backdrop for electronics.

02 · Material & interface sampling Three swatches established the construction logic on neoprene: conductive routes (embroidered pathways + snap connectors), an active bend-sensing zone in conductive fabric, and a refined layered interface adding Velostat as a pressure-responsive core. The distinction held throughout — a route carries the signal; a sensing zone changes under deformation.

03 · Mapping the body Sensing zones were placed where the upper body deforms most: shoulders, scapulae, upper arms, centre back and side torso. At this scale the wetsuit becomes a morphological body-map — local textile logic turning into embodied interface logic.

04 · Recording movement Bend-responsive zones were logged through Arduino and ESP32 serial workflows during repeated movement sequences (shoulder lift, scapula expansion, arm flexion), cross-checked with a multimeter. The aim wasn't a clinical dataset but a repeatable workflow — capturing relative bend intensity, repetition and left/right imbalance.

05 · The live visual In TouchDesigner, the recorded sensor values drive a responsive figure — bend, frequency and asymmetry parameters reshaping a point-cloud body in real time. The data is made legible as movement before it becomes form.

06 · Translating data to design A deliberately simple rule table converts the values into design actions: high bend → expansion zones; high repetition → articulation seams or release panels; high asymmetry → shifted zips and migrating panels. Data doesn't draw the garment — it decides where it opens, expands or holds.

07 · From data to form Those rules were applied through digital draping in CLO / Marvelous Designer — slash-and-spread, seam migration and zip displacement turning the wetsuit pattern into new architecture.

08 · Derived object — Exo Carry System The first output: shoulder data becomes a wrapped harness, scapula movement becomes articulated wings, centre-back deformation grows into a 3D volume, and stable side zones form anchoring ribs — a distorted, bio-adaptive carry object.

09 · Derived object — Hobo Bag The same logic, resolved differently: high-mobility zones become carry paths and soft expansion, stable zones pull inward for compression and form. A wetsuit-derived, body-mapped bag.

10 · Significance & status The contribution isn't a finished sensor — it's the reframing: sportswear as an interface that senses, structures and communicates movement through material. The work is at prototype stage; sensing needs further calibration and durability testing, and some later derivative forms used supplementary simulated values to explore outcomes quickly. The core workflow is grounded in recorded prototype data.