[ ! ] ANNOUNCING [ ! ] : SHE BON

It’s pronounced French-like, “bone”. This should translate to “she good”… and yes, the project is very much about the imagery floating around in your mind right now.

All playfulness intended, this wearable project is an exploration of female arousal. I heavily hinted at this interest in my open letter about normalizing sexual nature on Red Star last month. I think it made some people really uncomfortable- so obviously I need to publish more stuff like that. =3

The SHE BON project is a collection of wearable augments that tap into specific biological responses in order to detect an aroused state. Once triggered, a series of electronic and mechanical indicators located throughout the body will signal the wearers status to others nearby. This means that on a technical level, there are two parts to the development of the augments: sensing and indicating.

Sensing is the tricky, sciencie part that will require some R&D, where developing the indicators is a matter of design aesthetics and proper engineering.

The goal of the individual augments is to collectively complete an ensemble that when worn, will look attractive while also functioning to visually communicate the arousal level of the wearer.

My stipulations with indication:

• while in a passive state, the augments should look relatively static or innocuous: that is, off the bat, you shouldn’t be able to tell that they have anything to do with sex or arousal.
• once activated, the electronic and mechanical “tells” should stimulate the wearer as a byproduct of their primary function. This means the indicators should also be experienced by the wearer in an indirect way (one that might not be apparent to onlookers).
• This being said, the primary purpose for all of the augments is to communicate that the wearer is feeling aroused, NOT to act as a tool to produce or trigger the aroused state. It isn’t suppose to be a pleasure suit.

The challenges of sensing:

There are many different kinds of bio feedback that might suggest a woman is aroused. I talk about this to some length in my landing article about SHE BON; if you’re interested in my motivation to create this project, I suggest giving it a read!

I conclude that many of the signals a woman’s body uses to indicate arousal are unreliable in that they don’t exclusively signify that state. For example, elevated body temperature and heart rate occur after jogging, or coughing, or laughing really hard just the same. Determining a genuine aroused state becomes a matter of cross-referencing many different forms of bio-signs as well as the degree and order at which they’re fluctuating.

THE BEAT BOX

I woke a particular way last week and laid awake in bed… hearing my internal voice say, “what I’m in need of right now is a vagina whisperer.”

I laughed… but then nearly leaped to my feet; ran into my lab, fetched a set of calipers, and before my first cup of coffee, was standing with my legs apart measuring my pelvic bone. I created a new project in Fusion called “Hit Box” and sketched out the proportions of something that seriously and not intentionally looked a lot like a fillet of fish:

I printed many pieces, that once assembled by the end of the day, resulted in a speaker housing that mounts over the pelvic region and resembles something out of Tron.

The Hit Box or Beat Box is the first wearable I felt inspired to create. Like the abstraction that my internal voice suggested, its function is to whisper to your vagina in a volume equal to your current heart rate. The faster your heart beats, the louder the whispers. The louder the whispers, the more vibration is being sunk into the fleshy dampening of the wearer.

It is also notable that the louder the whispers become, the more likely they are to attract attention from others nearby. They might not be aware of the wearer’s elevated heart rate, but they will most certainly be wondering why voices are coming from their crotch.

Behold… BEAT BOX MK 1:

It’s worth noting that the LED strip along the inside of the enclosure will begin to pulse after a certain heart rate threshold is crossed… so the Beat Box will actually throb with light in sync with your pulse.

I am also adding a grid mesh behind the light panels so that when backlit, it has a refractive quality:

It is the first proof of concept, therefore much room for improvement remains. However, it works and looks pretty close to how I want it to. From here, I need to make it more comfortable to wear.

I’m not entirely sure whether I’ll keep the wings on the side, or leave it as just a strip of salmon. The wings certainly help it look like a pair of robot panties- but they don’t provide a function yet, so they might not be a necessary feature. Who knows. I’m waiting for my heart rate sensor to come in the mail so that I can start playing around with where and how that will attach to the wearer’s skin.

Alas. This is just one of several pieces I hope to make. Now that the pelvis region is covered (quite literally), I need to decide which part of the body to focus on for my next augment. As soon as I have all my bases covered, I do plan on slipping into one of my leotards and equipping my gear so that I may perform a systems test.

My goal is to have a complete set of fashionable peripherals to wear this summer out on the town. Yes, Sarah is going to the strip to model her lady boner in public. Hopefully I can talk one or more of my friends into coming along for the ride to film some of the occurrence.

In closing, this is one of several fun things I hope to create this year for the sake of encouraging the sort of buzz I’d like to hear. Cheers <3