Storytelling

During the storytelling class, I worked through a series of personal exercises to better communicate my project and build a clearer, more relatable narrative for MDEFest. Here's a breakdown of what I did:

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1. Perceived vs. actual challenge

• Perceived challenge: When I tell people my project is about sweat, they immediately react with disgust or discomfort. They often make a face or laugh, and it's hard to move past that first reaction.

• Actual challenge: Most people are curious but keep an emotional distance. They don’t know how to relate to the topic or feel uncomfortable talking about their own sweat.

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2. Superhero exercise

I created a sweat-powered superhero to metaphorically explore my project:

• Name: The Sweatinator

• Superpower: Sweats a lot, his sweat reveals hidden truths by reacting with clothes, turning stigma into visible knowledge.

• Fights against: Shame, hyper-clean aesthetics, societal norms that say sweat is “dirty.”

• Nemesis: The Dry Elite, a fictional corporate group promoting sterile, anti-sweat lifestyles.

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3. Biases and blind spots

I realized:

• Sweat is universal, but how people experience or feel about it is different based on gender, culture, health, and context.

• Not everyone wants to "reclaim" their sweat publicly, some prefer privacy.

• I could be reinforcing the cliché of “body as resistance” or shock value. I must go beyond that and create deeper emotional engagement.

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4. Target audience definition

• People with hyperhidrosis who relate directly to my struggle.

• Fitness communities who see sweat as effort and data.

• Curious creatives drawn to unconventional materials and bodies.

• The general public, since everyone sweats and deserves to reflect on that.

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5. Project’s personality (3 adjectives)

• Proud

• Sensitive

• Experimental

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6. Six-word project summary

“Sweat hides. I react. You watch.”

This condenses my story into an emotional arc of shame → response → visibility.

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7. Tone and communication context

I understood that my project should feel:

• Honest but not preachy

• Relatable, not clinical

• A bit playful and human-centered The tone should match the exhibition/performance setting: informal, immersive, and reflective.

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8. Final storytelling

It always started the same way. A dark stain under my arms, spreading slowly, betraying me. I'd feel eyes, real or imagined, drift toward it. I’d cross my arms. I’d hunch. I’d hide.

Sweat made me uncomfortable. Not just because it felt sticky or smelled strange, but because of what it symbolized: lack of control, vulnerability, weakness. I had internalized something that most of us do, this cultural obsession with dryness, with masking our bodies, with pretending we don’t leak, feel, or react.

But one day I thought: why? Why do I have to be ashamed of something my body naturally does? I mean, sweat can mean so many things: effort, heat, nerves, excitement. What if, instead of hiding it, I let it speak?

That’s when my project started. I began collecting my sweat. I tested it, dyed T-shirts with it, experimented with materials that change color depending on my pH. I tried to understand what my body was telling me, and how I could turn that into something visual, expressive even beautiful.

In the end, I made two special T-shirts. One tells my whole journey, through dyes, biomaterials, and sweat crystals. It’s like a wearable story about shame, curiosity, and empowerment. The second is simpler: it reacts only to sweat and lets me track it in real life, like a map of how I feel, where I stress, where I heat up.

I used to see sweat as something gross. Now I see it as information. My body talks. And I finally started listening.

So maybe next time you sweat, ask yourself: what’s your body trying to say?

Because sweating isn’t just normal, it’s human. And honestly, it’s kind of amazing.

Through this workshop, I learned how to simplify my message and focus on emotional clarity. Instead of just showing experiments, I now focus on telling a story of transformation: from shame to understanding, from hiding to revealing, from being quiet about my body to letting it speak visibly.

This helps me prepare for my performance and speak to others not as a “scientist,” but as a human being who found a way to understand his body through design.