Will Turnage shows off his "rocker" garment at #sxsw

[gallery] I'm currently at #sxsw interactive in Austin soaking in all the ideas, conversations and people. I was pleasantly surprised when R/GA's Will Turnage stood up in his talk with Chloe Gottlieb titled The Refrigerator Speaks: The Secret Language of Things to show off his awesomely smart "rocker" garment. To make a point about hacking into #smartthings, he created a smart shirt equipped with a Lilypad, Bluetooth, and lights that could be controlled by your cell phone. Punch in some commands and the lights would illuminate. He even added gestures. Tilt the phone right and the right side of the shirt would light up. Tilt left, and the left would light up. He then explained how he used Twitter's APIs to allow for the audience to tweet commands. Through the rest of the presentation, his shirt would light up as people tweeted about the presentation.

Turnage does a great job demonstrating how, as designers, we can take objects and services, augment them and combine them in interesting ways to create new and meaningful experiences. What are other ways to do this?

Check out this book they recommend referenced during their talk: Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design by Mike Kuniavsky.

Get a summary my sxsw visit so far on the Artefact blog.

Umi Hotaru Dress

[gallery] With all the buzz lately around gorgeous light-up couture, here's a lovely dress made of chiffon, tulle and two strings of LED lights called the Umi Hotaru Dress. And as an added bonus, you can pick up the pattern and make it yourself. Here's what the designer says about it:

The dress is based on a structure in Tokyo Bay called Umi Hotaru, or Firefly of the Sea. it was entered in my alma mater’s annual alumni show. I worked on this dress with my boyfriend who also graduated from the same school, but as an Engineer. We both designed the dress and I made the pattern and constructed dress. It’s made of chiffon and tulle and has two strings of solar powered LED lights wired in. The purse the holds the solar panels to charge the LEDs.

Continue reading and get the pattern at BurdaStyle.

Where Electronics Meet Textiles: a 2 day workshop

Lynne Bruning and Troy Nachitgall are hosting a 2-day eTextile workshop in Boulder on January 15 and 16 and it looks like a lot of fun! Info from the event site:

Join Italian eTextile Master Troy Nachtigall and award winning textile artist Lynne Bruning for a unique 2 day workshop in electronics, textiles and fashion. Troy is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology and teaches fashion and technology at the University IUAV of Venice, University Sapienza of Roma and the Institute of European Design.

Special Guest: Nwanua Elumeze, founder of Aniomagic, will share his company’s hardware advancements in eTextiles.

Image from event site.

Cushion controls by Droog Design

[gallery] I love these playful and simple cushion controls created by Didier Hilhorst and Nicholas Zambetti at Droog Design a few years ago. The project consists of different cushions each with its own function: one for the channels, one for the power, one for the volume and so on. The project aims to transform the fights over “who has the remote” into playful cushion fights. Like most of Droog's work, the project is conceptually strong as they change our perspective on the core interaction by re-imagining it and turning it into play.

Continue reading on didierandnicholas.com and droog.com. Images from didierandnicholas.com.

Even more light-up clothing

[gallery] However long it's been around in the wearable tech field, there seems to have been an explosion of light-up clothing in the news these days (read an earlier post about this topic). Now, I'm still not convinced that illuminating clothing is the best use of wearable technology, but it's tough to ignore all of the hype form celebreties performing and walking down the red carpet in illuminating clothing to DIY hackers creating Light Bright LED garments.

Here's some of the hype:

• According to talk2myshirt.com, there's a trend in light-up clothing including the Light Bright LED vest created by Erik Johnson that includes a total of 1,536 three color (RGB) LEDs
• Recently, Cute Circuit has created a variety of celebrity dresses including a design for Francesca Rosella and a light-up dress for singer Katy Perry for an event that she attended at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Met Costume Institute Gala
• Rihanna and Moritz Waldemeyer lit up the stage with an LED dress for her ‘Last Girl On Earth tour‘
• Fashion designer Zaldy created outfits for the likes of Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez designed for Michael Jackson’s ‘This is It tour’ his complete stage outfit including a illuminated Tuxedo for the ‘Billie Jean’ performance.

I'm still waiting for that killer light-up app that brings meaning to the functionality. Perhaps it will come from the $15 million consortium of leading companies and institutes in lighting and flexible electronics like Holst Centre/TNO, IMEC, Freudenberg, TU Berlin, Ohmatex under the lead of Philips with it’s inventive technology called ‘Lumalive‘. According to talk2myshirt "PLACE-it, the short form for ‘Platform for Large Area Conformable Electronics by InTegration‘ is a newly formed initiative under the umbrella of the European Commission under its Seventh Framework Program." I hope to see some real innovation come out of this research.

An actually cool light-up solution is a stage costume made and designed by Wei-Chieh Shih. According to fashioningtech, "the nylon suit is embedded with 200 laser diodes, transforming the performer into a mobile light show."

Now we're getting somewhere...

Images from talk2myshirt.com and fashioningtech.com.

A wind powered knitting machine creates scarves

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This was sent to me by the talented designer from n-ktr.com. With the power of the wind, Studio Merel Karhof based in London, has created a knitting machine that automatically knits a scarf continuously with each breeze. When the knit gets to a desired length, it is "harvested" and packaged up as an individual scarf. Here's how Karhof describes it: "Along the façade the knitwear moves slowly trough the window into the gallery, fast at hi wind speed, slow when there is not a lot of wind. The knitted material will be harvested from time to time, and rounded of in individually labelled scarves. The labels will tell you in how much time the scarves are made and on which day. They are sold in the by the Studio Designed Wind Knitting Shop, a shop which exists on the border between the private and the public space."

Continue reading on Karhof's portfolio site or at Abitare. Images from Abitare.