Catlike: Emotion-Responsive Wearables

What happens when the emotions we express don't match what we truly feel? Can we externalize our internal emotion changes like a cat does?"Catlike" reimagines wearables as a medium for emotional expression rather than data collection. Inspired by piloerection in cats: how their fur visibly rises when experiencing fear, excitement, or aggression. This project explores how shape-changing wearables can externalize internal emotional states through tangible, visible transformations. This project comprises two wearables that respond to real-time biometric signals: a headwear piece that inflates based on Heart Rate Variability, positioned at the center of social gaze, and a footwear piece that reacts to Gait and Plantar Pressure changes, positioned at the periphery of attention. By contrasting these body locations, investigates how wearable placement influences emotional expression in social contexts. Using pneumatic inflation powered by custom-modified 3D printing techniques for TPU heat-sealing and Arduino-controlled biometric sensing, these prototypes translate physiological signals into expressive social cues. Catlike challenges the current paradigm of wearables as measurement tools, proposing instead devices that express rather than classify, opening new possibilities for honest emotional communication, particularly for those who struggle to articulate feelings through language alone.

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Thea is an interdisciplinary designer with a background in fashion design. Following a year in the fashion industry, her practice shifted toward wearable technology as a site for experimentation and expression. Her work exists at the intersection of body and technology, employing emerging technologies as intimate extensions of the self. Driven by a love of making and learning, Thea draws inspiration from both technological systems and plant life, exploring organic and synthetic relationships through material and process.