River Marquardt

This concept stemmed from my passion for sports. The way my spine/back feel and function before a game greatly affect how I play, let alone the fact that it is such an important part of the body for all aspects of life. Personally, I find myself slouching or sitting too long with bad posture, so I really wanted to make a piece that is functional, bringing attention to a part of the body I believe is greatly overlooked. I took inspiration from exoskeletons and wanted to create this piece that will help support and protect the wearers back from bad posture and strain. I mimicked the design from the actual anatomy of a spine so that the wearer could still function normally, just now with added support. It isn’t completely functional although it does bring my attention to my posture when I am wearing it. Midway through I got the idea came to incorporate music. I would use a phone and headphones to recreate the nervous system on the spine that would send signals to the brain (The music). I am really thankful for my friend Donovan, a musician and architecture student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who I was able to work with on this project. He allowed me to have my own unique playlist that I am really happy with. To hold the phone, I just created a little box that would represent the sacrum, and then connected the individual vertebrae pieces with string. For the top, I made a piece to hook the shoulder straps into and would still allow the strap to be adjustable. On the sacrum, I used the dremel to cut out a strip to run the waistband through and then clipped the two straps together so it functioned like a backpack.