A wearable interface that channels a videogame player’s excess kinetic energy into a back massage for an innocent bystander.

Instructions: Playing Massage me requires two people, one who wears the jacket to receive the massage and one who massages the person wearing the jacket. Soft flexible buttons are embedded in back of the jacket so that wearing it turns your back into a gamepad. All you need to do is to sit or lay down in front of a video game player and you will be able to enjoy a back massage while the game lasts. Otherwise wasted button-pushing energy is transformed into a massage and the addicted game player becomes an inexhaustible masseur.

Massaging someone is usually a boring task. If you're lucky the most you'll get after a lot of pleading is a five minutes back rub. We noticed the potential of gamers, obsessed individuals in our midst, whose fingers seem to contain an endless source of energy. Transferring the concept of massage into the gaming scenario enables an innocent bystander to receive that long desired ever lasting back massage.

neoprene, stretch conductive fabric, fusible interfacing, perforated foam, wires, ribbon wire, PS1 controller, box, velcro, fold elastic, thread

The soft flexible buttons embedded in the back of Massage me are made from layers of conductive fabric and perforated foam. These buttons register the massage moves and interpret them before passing them on to the console as control signals. This means that Massage me works with existing games, and the best massages come from playing games that require the player to press a lot of buttons and combinations. Although Massage me currently works with a hacked a Playstation Controller, we believe it wouldn’t be hard to convert it to other consoles by hacking their controllers.