Capturing moments of excitement

(image source)

Designer Diana Eng created this heartbeat hoodie that captures moments of excitement throughout your day. It's equipped with a heart rate sensor and a camera that snaps a photo whenever your heart rate increases. The photos automatically upload to a blog that you can refer to or share with your friends. According to Eng, it is intended as a form of involuntary blogging.

What I love about this project is that it uses wearable technology as a way to sense and capture both reactions with our bodies and the context of our surroundings. Designers should constantly explore how technology can enable or enhance those relationships. Heartbeat hoodie succeeds in merging body sensing, environmental context, and social communication into a simple and beautiful concept.

Wearable technology conference, Feb 2

There's a one-day wearable technology conference coming up Feb 2nd in Munich, Germany. The focus is on the fusion of innovative technologies for products that are currently on the market or soon-to be. Here's how they describe the event: "Jackets with built-in GPS functions or solar panels, bluetooth communication gloves or jerseys that monitor your heart rate, measure sportive performance are no longer dreams of the future. The pioneering conference builds a bridge between the fashion and high-tech industry and focuses on decision makers and experts from commerce, production and science, in particular from the fields of sports, fashion, electronics and consumer electronics."

Read more here.

Illuminating heavy-knit dress

Designer Mary Huang created this heavy-knit dress that illuminates a soft white light. Conceptually, there's not much there, but the LEDs that Huang has integrated into the textile makes for a lovely glowing aesthetic. According to Dvice Huang says, "Integrating technology into a wearable piece can often be cumbersome, so in a successful piece, the design must outshine the technology." It should also have some sort of concept. Even so, the LEDs in this implementation are subtle enough that they would be intriguing in a place with dim light, such as a restaurant or lounge, and it makes a pleasing aesthetic.

For more light dresses, see my earlier post on Illuminating textile madness.

A machine for embroidering circuits

Gizmodo just announced this fantastic Brother QuattroT 6000D that includes a full color HD display and a camera that allows fabric to be auto-positioned for automatic embroidery. I immediately imagined using this machine to embroider circuits into textiles much like Becky Stern’s embroidered circuits titled “A Tribute to Leah Buechley". The possibilities of using embroidery to change the aesthetics of circuitry is endless.

Read more on my earlier posts around challenging the aesthetics of circuitry.

Evoking memories of relationships

Designer Elena Corchero focuses on creating work that explores lost values through the combination of clothing and technology. "By evoking the beauty and melancholy of craft, her work challenges the aesthetics and function of smart fabrics emphasizing the emotional value of keepsakes and garments." One of her many beautiful projects is WhisPiral, a gorgeous spiral-shaped shawl that carries whispers of your loved ones. It explores how technology can enhance the way garments and accessories evoke memories of these relationships.

The circuitry is integrated directly in the textile and allows your friends and loved ones to record short audio messages at different locations. These are then "whispered" back when you either wrap the shawl around you or if you caress a different area of the garment.

Bubelle blush dress reacts to emotions

Philips design probe program has created a variety of projects under the theme SKIN. The concept behind these experimental garments is to investigate the expression of emotion and personality through reactive wearable technology. The futuristic garments "show emotive technology and how the body and the near environment can use pattern and color change to interact and predict the emotional state" of the wearer. 

One of my favorite dresses is the gorgeous Bubelle Blush Dress, which uses biometric sensing technology that senses your emotions on its inner layer and projects them onto the outer layer. The result is a beautiful dress that illuminates light patterns within its textiles and reacts differently to every individual.

source via popgadget, we make money not art