andrew cotter

computational art + design

Hertzian Aegis

A love letter to Design Noir

For my senior capstone, I focused on on the qualia concerning electro-magnetic fields. Although we come in contact with EMFs several times a day, we don't give them much thought because we cannot perceive them.

In my senior fall semester, I made a prototype wearable that used a jumper wire as a sensor. The prototype itself only proved to be a capacitive sensor, but it helped me get used to using the Lilypad microcontroller as the conduit of my design. In the spring, I reverse-engineered an existing EMF sensor to have a qualitative output and mapped that output onto a coat.

By letting the user visualize electro-magnetic radiation, this wearable technology helps to better understand the hidden nature of electronic objects.