Ava Yanez

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Design: The Accelerometer-Shoes I’ve created induce the wearer’s sense of vibration in one’s environment. It’s a tool because it inflates pre-existing human senses. According to Donna J Haraway, a machine tool performs as a “caricature of [a] masculinist reproductive dream”. By wearing the accelerometer shoes, one becomes a “cyborg”; a hybrid of human and machine, which is the premise of Haraway’s correlating literary piece Cyber Manifesto. These roughly 6-inch tall platform sandals are made entirely out of steel and don’t include an outsole underneath them in order to echo oscillations from the ground. In a way, the ground becomes an outsole by planting the wearer into whatever environment they are in. To put them on you slip your foot through an ankle tie and rest your foot parallel to the insole. To ensure security when walking in them, the knotted ankle tie and slide strap lift the shoes to the wearer’s leg. Use: To utilize it as an analytical tool, or field station, I compared busy and non-busy, loud and quiet, and industrial and forestry areas of Union Square Park. To visually represent the variations in my comparisons, I squeezed a piece of tracing paper in my hand at varying tightness to how intensely I could feel vibrations. Digitally I rendered a map of my auditory/tactile experiences in the shoes. Inspiration: The design of a tactile evaluation was inspired by stethoscopes. I focused on the feet as a receptor for these vibrations because the floor was a consistent bridge between layers of the park, and feet are naturally the closest body part to the ground. Additionally, the soles of the feet are one of the most sensitive and therefore receptive parts of the body