Besides having cool songs what do have Take That, Will.I.AM, Rhianna, Bono and OK-Go in common? Their light fashion designer Moritz Waldemeyer.

Moritz Waldemeyer started to electrify and illuminate the fashion world by cooperating with Fashion design icon Hussein Chalayan back in 2006/07 with the Robotic Dress which was followed by a LED and laser light elements as part of the Haute Couture collection of Hussein Chalayan.

Based on the experience acquired during this cooperation Mortiz explored the show biz, lighting up performers on stage, integrating light show elements into a performers outfit by merging the on stage light show with the artist.

The latest video jacket designs for Take-That and Will.I.AM from Black Eyed Peas feature Mortiz’s in-house developed wearable LED video system, specially designed LED modules that are capable of displaying animations at video speed from a built in SD card in the Will.I.AM jacket or even a miniature video player in the jacket for Take That.

Dynamically changing light pattern on clothing is a fascinating, eye catching fashion design element that never fails to amaze people around.

Logically the entertainment industry is being at the forefront when it comes to utilize wearable light in it’s fullest and at the same time making the fans carving for owning such cool outfit.

Moving textile illumination from the stage into the mainstream wardrobe is the next big step for the wearable technology community. But this next big step might happen sooner than we think as history has shown many times before, the restless and creative mind of human beings always find a way to make the impossible happen.

Imagine the visual effect when people in the audience wear sound reactive outfit (see our blog post from yesterday) that interacts with the performer and the light show on stage – a new dimension of interaction of artists with their fan community.

British musician, songwriter and singer Imogen Heap performed at the opening of the annual TEDGlobal in Edinburgh/UK, with a pair of high-tech gloves, the ‘Musical Gloves‘, continuing the recent trend of the use of wearable technology by artists to enrich their performance.

The ‘musical gloves’ are essentially a high/soft tech musical instrument enabling the artist to manipulate, to compose on-the-fly with hand gestures music based on virtual instruments, recordings of vocals and acoustic effects.

Imogen performed without any other electronic devices or the use of pre-recorded material. Gestures with the ‘musical gloves’ such as a grasping motion to ‘catch’ the sound of her voice which is then filtered by clasping the hands together and ‘release’ the sound again by opening the hands.

Sounds really interesting, would have loved to see the performance but could not find a video clip online.

From where is the ‘musical glove’ magic coming?

Accelerometer and gyroscope sensors in each glove detect the movements of the finger joints and the orientation of the hands in space and microphones at the wrist capture surrounding sounds.

These movement/location/acoustic information is then send wireless to a computer for audio sound processing.

The ‘musical gloves’ have been developed by Dr Tom Mitchell, a lecturer and researcher at the University of the West of England in collaboration with Imogen and support by Fifth Dimension Technologies (5DT) and x-IO.

I am really fascinated seeing the growing number of artists collaborating with wearable technology experts to spice up their performance, be it via magical visual (light) effects or magical acoustic effects. I am giving a high-five for the ‘musical gloves’ and Imogen Heap.

[New Scientist via BBC News]

The use of wearable technology for performance wear on stage is one of the driving forces in the exploration of wearable technologies.

The VJacket is a great example on how to integrated a performers motion on stage to manipulate videos and sounds in real-time.

Built into the jacket are bend, touch and hit sensors which you can use to send OpenSoundControl or MIDI messages wireless to the VJ program of your choice, letting you control video effects and transitions, trigger clips and scratch frames all from the comfort of your own jacket.

Tyler Freeman and Andreas Zingerle, the creator of the VJacket, integrated 5 sensors into the VJacket: 1 Softpot, 2 piezos, 2 bend sensors, 1 photo resistor.

Check out the fantastic video clip, it shows how cool this type of stage outfit can be.

Tyler and Andreas make the VJacket development freely accessible for everyone to follow as DIY instruction on the VJacket project blog.

The fascination of wearable illumination just got another twist by illumination fashion designer Moritz Waldemeyer who created a pair of illuminated sneakers for ‘Step Up 3D’, for the world’s first dance movie in 3D.

Over the past years we have seen shoes and sneakers upgraded with illumination ranging from kids shoes with blinking light in the sole to more stylish looking party sneakers using LED or EL elements.

Moritz has like in his other illumination clothing designs, raised the bar of how light elements in shoes can spice up otherwise dull and static looking shoes.

LED panels are placed around the sneakers. Integrated motion sensors create waves of light across the shoes depending on the movements of the dancers.

‘Step Up 3D’ will be released on August 3rd where the LED Sneakers will be at the spot light of action.

I don’t think this type of shoes will make it any time soon to retail, they might be too fragile to be beaten up on our city streets but for partying – LED sneakers would serve as a cool outfit.

Cute Circuit seems to have found a bright spot in the showbiz by designing gorgeous looking, illuminate stage wear for artists.

The latest design from Francesca Rosella is a gorgeous looking illuminated dress worn by singer Safura, representing Azerbaijani at the Eurovision 2010 song contest.

The deep blue chiffon dress is equipped with small LEDs creating a multicolor display by amplifying the concept of the live scenery of the ‘Drip Drop’ stage act. A fabulous example how to include a performers dress into the light show on stage.

The theme of the song, which is visualized via the stage light design, is the element of water, from lonely drops to a powerful rainfall to a stormy ocean in line with the lyrics of Safura’s song ‘Drip Drop’.

The color play of the LEDs in the dress is activated via a wireless signal in sync with the deep blue hues symbolizing the living flow of the ocean at one point to a hot red glow visualizing the emotions in the song.

Get captivated from the mystic of the ocean and the LED dress  – watch the video below and see the full sparkle of this dress towards the end when Safura walks down the catwalk.

A BIG Thank You to our talk2myShirt fans, especially in and around Europe, we got over 200 emails since late Saturday pointing to this fabulous dress seen by a multi-million Eurovision audience in and outside Europe.

Although Safura didn’t win the contest she definitely won the talk2myShirt Best-Dress award at the Eurovision 2010 together with Francesca Rosella and Cute Circuit for the Best Dress Design.

With all the hype surrounding illuminated clothing, especially among artists on stage, I thought to beam up the illuminated Tuxedo Michael Jackson would have worn on the ‘This is It‘ if things in his life would have turned out for a better.

Fashion designer Zaldy who 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.

A line of color exploding light would have run along the side starting from the ankle socks up the tuxedo pants, jacket into a single white glove that would light up as well.

Check out this video which shows the illuminated ‘Billie Jean’ outfit on a mannequin.

‘Light is important for performing. Normally the light comes up from behind the singer, but it creates a very special and emotional effect when the singer himself is lit up.’ said Zaldy.

I couldn’t agree more with this statement – it’s expressing the emotional, the magical effect living light on a performer that captivates people around.

Michael was very happy with the results: at one point during rehearsals he looked into the mirror and said: ‘This is everything I ever wanted!’

Unfortunately, the tour never happened, and the outfit was not brought to life.

[source: Lumalive]

The list of top artists performing in illuminated stage outfit is growing rapidly, representing a trend that might swap over from the stage to the streets one day.

Rihanna and Moritz Waldemeyer did it again, lighting up the stage with a gorgeous looking LED dress for her ‘Last Girl On Earth tour‘ which kicked off last month in Belgium and will come to US in July and August.

Last year Rihanna’s Laser shoulder pad dress was a revolutionary, SciFi inspired stage outfit using laser beams to captivate the fans.

Moritz Waldemeyer, a pioneer in developing technology for haute couture with Fashion icons like Hussein Cahalayan, is pushing the boundaries between cutting edge technology and traditional textiles, challenging ‘old views’ by demonstrating the possibilities wearable technologies can add to stage wear but ultimately also to the fashion world.

Naturally the showbiz is always wide open for innovation, having the privilege of almost unlimited budget to create stage outfits and the advantage to use materials and technologies not yet ready for the general public.

But once we, the fans of these idols spot such cool outfits we do almost everything to get one at least in a scaled down, more affordable version. This in turn will trigger higher interest by designer to be more exploratory in creating light animated garments.

The dress and jacket design comes from Paris based couturier Alexandre Vauthier incorporating ‘… a unique combination of compressed gas systems and video capable LED circuits‘ as stated on Moritz’s Website.

I couldn’t find more specifics on that statement, sounds like another innovative leap in Moritz Waldemayer’s technology inspired fashion creations.

While the wearable electronic business community is scratching their heads in search of the killer application highly creative and innovative designer seems have no problem to come up with pleasantly exiting designs in the clothing market.

Clothing does not always mean what we wear everyday or evening. There is a wide range of professional, specialized clothing which might be more suitable, might benefit more from wearable technology integration.

Marina Polakoff at ShowOfLight, creator of the Light Dress we covered earlier, designed a ‘Light animated figure skating costume‘ bringing textile technology to the ice skating arena.

The light animated costume was on ice last weekend at the Crystalline Figure Skating Competition 2010 in Santa Rosa, CA.

Marina’s textile light design reacts to the music by using beat and pitch recognition technology and motion sensor to bring the animation in sync with the performer.

The integration of dynamic light effects into the costume allows the choreographer to add a visual dimension to figure skating, complementing and extending the visual experience we all appreciate when watching figure skating.

Marina plans to expand this concept with a Costume Light Choreography on multiple ice skating costumes at the same time. This would allow for large scale lighting effects and patterns.

The ultimate goal is to participate in a sophisticated skating program with multiple illuminated costumes using lighting techniques which truly express the artistic intentions of choreographers and performers.

What a great example of using active, dynamic light effects integrated into clothing.

Lady Gaga is not only famous for her hit songs like ‘Poker Face‘ or ‘Paparazzi‘ she is equally famous for her love to fashion experiments so it was only a matter of time until the Lady showed one of the most sophisticated stage outfits, the ‘Living Dress‘, while performing ‘So Happy I Could Die‘ at the Liverpool Echo Arena last week.

The ‘Living Dress’ magically parts at the front, revealing Lady Gaga’s legs.

The concept of shape altering clothing is around for some time, designer like  Hussein Chalayan, Di Mainstone, Kerry Jia Yi Lin, Ying Gao or recently Diana Eng have explored different concepts with various technologies to animate clothing.

Lady Gaga, like a growing number of artists, make use of technology enhanced clothing to add a new, visual dimension to their stage shows.

From the wearable electronic community point of view this trend is very welcome as it helps to communicate, to visualize the possible potentials of technology infused clothing.

We all know that whatever super stars are doing or wearing is hot and will one way or the other show up at fashion shops around the corner.

But there will be a catch: unlike textile illumination, shape changing clothing requires complex mechanics and electronics putting the challenge to wearable electronic designer and engineers to work out solutions usable for the hard world of fashion reality.

The first 70 seconds in the video below show the Living Dress in action:

I have used the word ‘magic’ frequently when introducing illuminated clothing or other illuminated textile objects but after watching Marco Tempest, a new age magician and Techno-illusionist performing his light magic which includes light spots jumping between his hands and jacket, magical illuminated clothing got a new dimension.

While illuminated clothing on stage has found it’s followers among top artists, Marco is the first magician who includes his stage outfit into his magic light performance.

Marco’s jacket interacts with a light sphere where the light jumps from his hands to the front of the jacket, runs up his sleeves and escapes the jacket and is fetched again by Marco.

A interactivity with clothing only a great magician can envision.

You will be interested in the video segment between 1:10 and 2:35 minutes where Marco gives his stunning performance including the magical jacket.

No matter how I look at illuminated clothing, it has a magical power. Why else would people use it for special occasions like weddings, musicians to create a special effect on stage or many others to have some fun at a party.

Light is magical in every aspect but if textiles, which we are used to see only in colored variants suddenly light up, showing different colors, it’s truly magic.