The garment is a seemingly normal-looking jacket—but it can control an MP3 player through a subtle interface using traditional garment trims. The Discreet Interface is a way to embed and control technology without compromising the wearer's comfort, style, and fashion statement.
This necklace features 2-amp 125-volt slow blow fuses. It is also a play on the parallels between engineering and artistry. A major inspiration for these pieces was the 1934 MoMA exhibition, "Machine Art," which featured a self-aligning ball bearing, and objects such as compasses and microscopes, as works of art.
This piece features used vintage reed switches. It is inspired by the idea that there is a beauty to objects that are carefully considered and executed for the purpose of functionality (as well as the idea that these objects can have a second life, in an unintended function).
The system of fashion is set on the continuous change of styles and speculations of the image of clothing that are represented through mass media and network of individual expressions. This work aims to explore the effect of the fashion system by creating a micro fashion network with the basic elements color and time. A camera captures people and the custom software processes and stores dominant colors of moving bodies. Color values that are close to each other are connected with the distance of time and form a color network.
At the frontier, our liberty is stripped away... we enter the universe of control....We submit to scrutiny, to inspection, to judgment. We must be passive, docile. To be otherwise is to be suspect.
—Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line
<Random> Search is a subtle, reactive undergarment. It logs and shares the experience of invasive airport searches on behalf of our silent, abiding, fearful bodies.
This project is about trying to reach out but being unable to. These crocheted gloves and sleeve-like garments embody the impulse to create connections with others but prevent any such interaction from taking place. They extend from the body but reinforce a sense of separation.
These crocheted stuffed objects make sounds when you squeeze them. The sounds were produced by systematically converting two-dimensional shapes into sound waves. When squeezed, the objects become animated and seem as if they are trying to talk to you, as well as to each other. Their soft covers and bright colors encourage a warm and playful interaction.
These crocheted hats were designed as part of a project that involved mailing the hats between the artist in Cambridge, MA and the artist's family in the Philippines. One hat was made for each of six members of the artist's family and the hanging pom poms on the hats measure the exact height of the artist. The project attempted to document a relationship through the act of gift-giving, creating an event that provided intimacy whilst emphasizing distance.
UFOS are sneakers modified to include an illuminated rear "bumper." Embedded circuitry senses each foot's motion in 3-D space, and generates a pulsing gradient of glowing color that shifts with each movement. Each wearer will have a unique pattern of colors based on their individual stride.
Lumiloop is a modular system of program and display panels that can be chained together to form a reactive bracelet. Each display module features a small 8x8 LED matrix, dynamically driven by an interchangeable program module. The program modules holds different display programs and include varying sensors for the bracelet to respond to. A program module with an accelerometer interprets gestural motions of the wrist and generates illuminated patterns in response.
As an exploration of how a design changes through shape and color, we created a gown that fits closely to the body but inflates to become bell shaped with tendril-like spikes on the back and large pillows of air on the sides. The silhouette of the gown can be changed by varying the amount of air.
A collection of outfits that convert from one look to another based on principles from TRIZ (the Russian theory of inventive problem solving), biomimetics, and deployable structures. The collection, at first glance, seems to be a series of monotone greys, but each outfit converts to reveal richly colored, digitally printed fabrics and different silhouettes.
ætherspace is a computational garment that uses transducers of electro-magnetic waves to turn "Hertzian space" into sonic waves, giving the wearer a better understanding of the electronically-embodied world. What is the sound of the imperceptible becoming perceptible?
A super-expressive spraying clicky-blaster that allows the empowered wearer to leave hypertraces in the four dimensions. The FatJab offers another perspective to the process of reclaiming public spaces. It's an expressive tool that enables the wearer to spray-paint letters, patterns and shadings wherever they feel appropriate.
The Closer Pullovers are snuggly, huggably soft garments that respond to positive touch interactions. They inspire playful, real-time, real-space contact in order to show technology's capacity to spread positive touch experiences between people.
A wearable simon-like experience with integrated touch sensors which enable you to play on the back of your fellow man. With this shrug, you get simultaneous play time and a wonderful massage.
Dream deeply and sweetly while the technological future bathes the dark, sleepless world. The comfy security we can snuggle into bed, a protection of the flesh via resistor-studded pajamas, enables a most peaceful sleep. The night cap, adorned with electrodes and headphones, will soothe with the lullaby of listening to your own dream feedback.
You can't live without your clothes, but have you ever wondered if your clothes can live without you? This dress happily thrives on human indulgence, but intensifies its appetite until you can give no more...
bYOB [Build Your Own Bag] is a distributed sensor network for clothing and accessories that is comprised of fabric blocks put together like Lego to create smart objects. The system enables you to build things like bags and scarves that confer with each other to ensure you have your wallet when you leave the house and that one or other other is not left behind on the subway. Quite simply, bYOB makes possible customizable functional attire.
This project investigates the conversion of energy as part of the process of walking. As the wearer walks, bellow-heeled boots generate air to 'fuel' a visual pattern of the path of the journey—a colored trace on a dress mapped with the topography of the female form.
Each day, we run into people, and each of those moments has the potential to become part of our very selves. More often then not, though, we don't even remember these moments beyond a few minutes. Contact provides an "external memory" of chance meetings. Each device has its own unique pattern, shown on embedded LEDs; when they sense the presence of another wearer, they exchange part of their "pattern DNA" with the other device, affecting what they show. The pattern begins anew each day, and changes die away with time, echoing the cycle of human memory.
The kitty skirt is a playful exploration of femininity, domestication, and the predator/prey relationship.
The SmartButton allows you to make phone calls, initiate PTT sessions, or give commands to your wearable via speech depending on how long you hold down the button and what you say. The SmartButton uses Bluetooth to communicate with the base unit of the modular communications device.
Maestro represents how short range wireless communication can impact the design of personal communications + computing devices. This modular, highly adaptable device provides the functions of a cell phone and PDA and more. It consists of a base unit that contains most of the intelligence and local applications with components that can be separated for use.