See u in my tee – Social networking T-Shirt

Portuguese Digital Arts student Inês Petiz envisions T-Shirt’s that exchange part of our identity with others having a smart T-Shirt as well. Sounds like MySpace or FaceBook for clothing as we exchange quite a bit of our identity on such platforms by posting on each others wall.

Inês ‘See u in my tee‘ project uses clothing to communicate our visual identity. This is nothing new in itself, especially T-Shirts are used to express our identity and to shout out a message. No other clothing item is so interwoven with our identity as the T-Shirt we are wearing.

The ‘See u in my tee’ goes one step further and replaces part of the T-Shirt’s static print with a dynamic, changeable portion. When two of these interactive T-Shirt wearer come close on the street or a party, the T-Shirts will exchange part of the visual pattern from each others shirt, the pattern of a T-Shirt we select because we do identify with the message it sends out to the rest of the world.

For all eTextile wizards among our readership: the ‘See u in my tee’ project is using the LilyPad Arduino, a LED matrix, an Arduino Diecimila connected to a Xbee and a power source. The Arduino controls the LED matrices and the Xbee establishes the communication between the T-Shirts, allowing the animation exchange.

Here is the link to Inês (in Portuguese) project blog documenting the making-off ‘See u in my tee’.

I very much like the idea of this concept which adds not only an additional layer of a more dynamic T-Shirt design but also an additional layer of the identity carrying and in this case also sending information, a function each and every T-Shirt is used for.

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