Wearable forest

Ryoko Ueoka, Hiroki Kobayashi and Michitaka Hirose created this beautiful piece titled Wearable Forest from University of Tokyo and I can't get enough of it! This gorgeously delicate and illuminating dress interacts bio-acoustically with a remote forest. Lights are integrated into the fabric and their illuminations react to wildlife around the world through a wireless link connected to the internet. Real-time data and sound streams from the internet to the dress.

The beauty of this piece is that it expands beyond a single garment into one that is an ecosystem by enabling real-time environmental data from the web to interact with it. This provides a unique connection to nature and opens up the possibilities of "a completely new dimension of how clothing design can interact, react and merge with the environment," source via Talk2MyShirt.

See a video of the dress in action here.

Add wireless communications to LilyPad

Kate Hartman and Rob Faludi co-developed LilyPad XBee, a LilyPad Arduino Main Board addition that enables wireless communication. Now you can add even more functionality to your garments by allowing them to communicate to each other. 

According to Sparkfun, the "LilyPad is a wearable e-textile technology developed by Leah Buechley and cooperatively designed by Leah and SparkFun. Each LilyPad was creatively designed to have large connecting pads to allow them to be sewn into clothing. Various input, output, power, and sensor boards are available. They're even washable!" Like the LilyPad, the module is designed so that it can be sewn directly into fabrics and there are a variety of different modules with different specs. I can't wait to get my hands on them!

Book review: Switch Craft

For those interested in designing and developing wearables, the growing DIY culture is a great place to get your hands dirty. Alison Lewis, of Switch, published a book titled Switch Craft that includes a variety of projects that help you learn about crafting soft circuits. The projects allow you to show off, share alike, work it, and play hard. They range from simple fabric magnets that light up to plush pillows you can use to talk to your friends. Most projects use existing circuits that you hack and embed into fabrics. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Petal Shuffle This fashionable hat makes you look good while hiding away your iPod shuffle. There's not much circuitry involved since you simply sew your shuffle directly into the hat. The controls are built into the flower pedals, so you simply position the controls from your shuffle under them, which allows you to control the volume and change songs.

Pillow Talk A pillow that connects your cell phone so that you can "pillow talk" your friends to sleep. Making this looks fairly straightforward. Simply integrate headphones with a speaker input into the pillow. There is some re-wiring involved.

Lovie Circuits These are my absolute favorites! These cute little plushy companions light up when they kiss. The circuit used is a simple LED light with a battery. The wiring is sewn into the fabric to the mouth so when they touch, it completes the circuit and lights each companion up. Adorable.

Voodoodoll For the bad angel in all of us, the Voodoodoll wiggles and squirms when it's poked with a needle. The circuit is made up of a battery and a vibrating motor set. A sponge is stuffed inside the doll that is wrapped in conductive fabric. When the pin is pushed into the conductive sponge, it triggers the circuit and makes the little guy shake.

To see more of these adorable soft-circuit projects, get the book here.

Voice-activated inflatable combat

Front v3.0 developed a wearable device that changes and responds to the wearer's emotions. The Millefiore Effect is a voice activated inflatable combat game that is played between two people. It "elicits and facilitates responses and communication between people. This work both relies on and disrupts our codes of behavior and interaction with others."

These humorous garments are made of sections of offensive and defensive inflatable air sacs. A microphone is attached to the back of each garment that detects the volume of voice. This triggers fans that either inflate or deflate the wearer's or the opponent's garment.

What's fun about these gorgeous space-age garments is that the concept plays with the unpredictable variables in human conflict by allowing your emotional response to strategically protect you from your component or offensively attack. 

Watch the movie of it in action here.

Challenging the aesthetics of circuitry

Once again, Leah Buechley, a pioneer in soft circuits and the creator of the LilyPad developers kit, has been experimenting with painted electronics that ultimately challenge the aesthetics of circuitry. She's got a new Flickr set of her painted digital wallpaper installation where she's using multiple LilyPads and conductive paint for the circuitry. I can't wait to see what the final outcome will be.

Last month, we talked about Buechley's paper computing and circuits and Becky Stern's embroidered circuit titled “A Tribute to Leah Buechley“. Both challenge our notion of how circuits can look as well as behave. Read the posting here and see a video of Buechley's paper circuits in action.

Resource via Make Magazine.

Fashioning environmental noise

Designers Younghui Kim and Milena Iossifova Berry collaborated on HearWear, a collection of garments that visualize environmental noise. The garments detect the noise levels in the context in which you are standing, and translates the levels into light patterns. The louder it is around you, the brighter the garments become. The designers used integrated circuitry, a microprocessor, and a number of LEDs and electroluminescent wire to achieve the behavior. Here's a diagram of how it works:

What I love about this project is that, according to the designers, they "work not only towards a better environmental awareness for most people, but also towards the unnoticeable integration of technology in your day to day fashion and lifestyle." As a result, they seamlessly integrate the technology into the garments in a way that is gorgeous and that informs the fashion aesthetics of the garment. For example, one skirt uses electroluminescent wire along the seams to create a pattern on the front of the skirt. Another uses painted shapes down the front that host the electronics, which creates the aesthetic pattern.