A Wearable Nebula Material Investigations of Implicit Interaction

In this paper, we present the Nebula, a garment that translates intentional gestures and implicit interaction into sound.Nebula is a studded cloak made from a heavy fabric that envelopes the wearer with many pendulous folds. We describe the design process, and specifically highlight three material investigations that show particularly important material connections that were fundamental to the experience of the garment: How the draping and construction of the garment allowed for implicit interaction, how the studs were used both as a computational sensing material and a strong visual component, and how the sound design exploited tangible material qualities in the garment. Finally, we discuss how such material investigations in general can be put to use. Both as a way to produce evocative connections in the materials available in design work, but also as a way to extract legible design intentions for other designers and researchers.