LUCIDMEDIA

The Multimedia Experience - Wearable Interactive Art

Written by Lisa M. Knapp Monday, 23 March 2009 15:41

As an ever changing society, we are always searching for new ways to stand out from the crowd, and new inventions to wow passersby.  We tend to search for things that will also help us with our busy life.  With all that in mind, inventors have come up with things such as the Blackberry, or the iPhone, even children’s shoes that light up when they walk, and because our culture seems to be gearing towards the technological world, these are the things that are paid most attention to and other brilliant things are overlooked.

There is so much more than meets the eye when it comes to the world of technology.  Can you imagine a jacket that dries with the touch of a button, or warms you up because of the built in solar panels?   Have you ever thought you want to literally light up a room when you walk in?  What about built in speakers in your clothing?

Soon to make their way into a closet near you, interactive fashion is a new wave in the art world.  The incorporation of electronics into very wearable apparel is a relatively new school of design for fashion specialists and designers.  Now engineers and designers are working hand in hand turning their ideas into brilliant designs for today’s reshaping of our technologically addicted society we dwell, and the role that our clothing plays in daily life.
As our modern culture evolves and embraces various modes of advanced technology that make us ‘cool’ and make our lives easier, we search for new ideas that do exactly the same thing.  From Bluetooth headsets to the iPhone, we now search for looks, glamour and eye catching materials that will make us stand out from the crowd.

The idea of interactive fashion brings people together socially, and will give that person who wears that shirt of skirt the want to show it off.  In a sense, interactive fashion’s main ideology is to promote social interaction.
You can be a rockstar with ThinkGeek.com’s interactive fashion.  They have designed a T-shirt that has a built in drum kit that is machine washable and quite fun to play around with.   Not only does the drum kit look pretty trendy, but once you start playing around with it, you can’t stop.  This will make the Rock band game seem obsolete.  How it works, simply put: You hit the drums with your finger and they play through the built in speaker.  The shirt has seven, different drum sounds, so when you are ready for a personal drum solo, you can play it on your chest.   Though the shirt does require 4 AAA batteries, the battery pack and speaker are all stored in a hidden pocket in the shirt, which you simply remove and carefully peel the drum decal from the T-shirt. Machine wash, gentle cycle on cold and hang to dry, and you’re all set.

This is not the only interactive piece of clothing ThinkGeek has available either, they also have a personal soundtrack shirt that you can upload your personal mp3’s into with a remote control to change the tune; a wi-fi detector shirt that displays current wi-fi signals; and even a T-equalizer shirt that animates to noise or music; they even have interactive jewellery.  Check out their website at www.thinkgeek.com to see everything they have.

Another brilliant design is a collaborative effort put together by Younghui Kim and Milena  Iossifova Berry called HearWear which is the Fashion of Environmental Noise Display.  Their vision is mentioned on Kim’s personal website http://www.younghui.com/ “As a fashion HearWear connects people through sensing and displaying environmental sound.”  It further states “We 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.”  HearWear is garments that visually reflect your auditory surroundings.  Basically it senses sound levels and utilizes a scale of lights to reflect amplitude in clothing or accessories.  The louder the surroundings, the more the clothing lights up.  The technology used is a micro – processor and microphone that are built into the garments or bags along with LED lights and electroluminescent wiring.

Another concept, designed by Younghui Kim is called Stir It On!  This brilliant and beautiful item of clothing is an interactive skirt that, reacts to any close encounter such as bumping or touching.  The skirt has design patterns on the surface that emit subtle lights when it’s encountered by nearby touch or rubs.  Kim’s inspiration for this piece was bioluminescent bay organisms called Dinoflagellates which react when they are stirred up.  This particular piece calls attention to the notion of our personal space and now this space can be protected by warnings through our fun wearable fashion.

Anke Loh is another one of these experimental fashion designers.  Her fashion project is called Dressing Light.  She mentions on her website at http://www.ankeloh.net/ that she “was especially interested in the light that illuminates Chicago and Antwerp so differently by day and by night, and the architectural elements of both cities.”  Her focus was to experiment with optical fibres illuminated by high – quality LED lighting. She has come up with some brilliant pieces which reflect her vision and her personality. The fabric can contain text, graphics and even animations.  She has one in particular that features people laughing, a changing cartoon cityscape and much more.

These are just a few of the many designers that have successfully incorporated technology and fashion.  I get so inspired and motivated when I see new ideas evolving in the world, and this is what I believe to be just the beginning of things to come in the incorporation of fashion and technology.