What: Fashion Up-Skilling Innovation Open Network | European project

Where: IPCA, Barcelos (PT)
When: 2020 - 2022

Phenotypic Plasticity is a project based on the homonymous concept of plants that change their physiology or anatomy to better adapt themselves to adverse circumstances. 

In this context, Garment is seen as the phenotype that deals with the loss, more specifically, with the loss of memory and a limb, in elderly people. 

Phenotypic Plasticity aims to restore tactile sensations and promote cognitive stimulation, visibility, orality, and empowerment for the elderly, through a mechanical prosthesis for upper-limb amputation - integrated into clothing - which allows a sensory experience from a handshake.

There is a button made of smart textiles, integrated into the prosthetic hand, that acts as an input. The visitor is invited to interact with the highlighted prosthesis garment using a handshake when a communicational act triggers a device that emits sound, where a statement from my great aunt, who is 97 years old, is narrated by herself.

The Garment-integrated wrist-powered hand prosthesis

Materials: Prosthesis-Garment 3D printed in flexible filament (TPU) and added with gold leaf, and prosthetic hand in a carbon-based filament.

This research was funded by the project Fusion: Fashion Up-Skilling: Inovation OpenNetwork, with the reference nº EACEA-34-2018, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and had as partners: Limerick Institute of Technology, lead partner (Ireland); Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e do Ave (Portugal); Fondazione Santagata Per L'Economia Della Cultura (Italy); Crafts Council (UK).

You can meet all the amazing participants of the project, as well as check how the exhibition opening was at the Circolo Del Design centre in Turin, Italy. 

A special thanks to the entire team of Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e do Ave (IPCA), Portugal.

To my great aunt Irany Lopes dos Santos who granted the interview, and to my cousin Lucia Lopes dos Santos who contributed to this interview taking place remotely.

And to my beloved mother, Neusa Mendes, who, in addition to her emotional contribution, is the model in the images above.