The goal of the fight or flight dress was to create a dress that exerted a physical feeling. Its purpose was to be an addition to the emotion mask which expressed an emotion. When thinking about a physical feeling that can be expressed I imagined the feelings of goosebumps and butterflies in your stomach. Those sort of reactions are the bodies fight or flight response. I decided I wanted to create a dress that exemplifies and expands that response. 

A persons fight or flight response is triggered by the autonomic nervous system. Within the autonomic nervous system there are two subcatagories; the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is the primal aspect in our brains that reacts when a person is in danger, or stressed, or scared. Adrenaline is released throughout the body signaling for the body to "get bigger". I use quotation marks because by bigger that means the eyes dialate and we get goosebumps. Other reactions include increased heartbeat, change in body temperature and digestive functions, etc. 

I used this as my first inspiration for my dress. Alongside that I looked at animals who perform similar functions, but on a more extreme scale. For example, a pufferfish blows itself up when a predator is around. Alonside that, peacocks and other birds expand their wings (sometimes this is also used to attract their mates). 

Iteration 1 

I knew I wanted to create a dress that expanded to showcase the bodies reaction to adrenaline. The first design I made was based off of the Hoberman sphere, which expands and contracts. I created a mini Hoberman sphere, but realized that I wanted there to be more texture to the dress.

Iteration 2

The second thing I worked on was creating the diamond shape based off of the emotion mask. I decided that there should be diamonds that move up and down which I designed and cut out of wood.

Iteration 3

The third iteration I worked on was designing how the diamonds could move up and down. The first prototype was made out of cardboard and was very successful. The one downside to it was that it showed a lot of the infrastructure on the outside of the dress which I did not want. 

Iteration 4

My fourth design compared two models for my dress panels. The first one was based off my initial design of how the dress would move up and down, the second panel idea used a laser cut stick with notches sticking out of it that the diamonds would move up and rest upon. The second panel was very frustrating to use, but with the help and Rosie and Saba, we decided to go for that one. Even though it was more complex to design and create, its aesthetic potential was much greater.

Iteration 5

The fifth iteration looked at improving the ladder panel. This panel was well thought out, however, I missed one key piece which was that when I moved on link down the move the diamonds up, since the diamonds were different shapes it prevented them from actually working. I recreated this design so that the tops of the diamonds where the same dimensions. This allowed the mover to work perfectly. 

Iteration 6

This piece is still in process, but the final panel design has been created and I just need to assemble it tomorrow morning. This panel design should work. When I finished cutting out the pieces each panel should allign well and therefore create a skirt.