Aquaborg: From mythological hybrids to assistive techno-fashion

Aqua-borg presents a socio-technical strategy for designing female prosthetics by valuing the users’ desire for expressiveness, affects and emotion equally with their physical needs. It is assumed that engaging female, prosthetic users in exploratory research and co-creative sessions will lead to speculative wearables that empower their users and help them re-imagine their embodiment, identity and attractiveness in non-normative ways.

I present the methods and results of my iterative collaboration with a female prosthetic user, a journey full of frustration and ambiguity for both of us, which challenged me to alternate roles between a critical listener, an empathetic researcher, a technological designer and a woman. I describe my user’s disability journey, pain points and oppressed desires, as well as how feminine attractiveness and body-image can be reconstructed through the lens of technohybridity. Together we ideated scenarios of morphing prosthetics and explored how those ludic wearables potentially satisfy the user’s physical, expressive and emotional needs on the beach. Finally, I crafted those prosthetic concepts into virtual models and mapped them on the human body through an Augmented Reality app so that prosthetic users can evaluate the emotional and experiential affects of emerging prosthetics.