During my travel to Austria, Vienna, I discovered a Viennese inspired wearable electronic project from NYC based Ambreen Hussain a Masters graduate in Fine Arts at Parsons, The New School for Design.

Her project the ‘Spin on the Waltz‘ or ‘Spin‘ for short, creates a new and interactive sound environment for Viennese waltz dancers through two wearable garments with embedded technologies that trigger an electronically generated melody.

These two wearable outfits are constructed for professional-level male and female Viennese waltzers and act as new media audio instruments that allow the dance and the two bodies to control music in an interactive manner, instead of the music controlling the dance in its static form.

Three sensors are placed on both the male and the female garment. Each of these five encounters triggers a sensor that controls the output of a synthesized melody.

In a sense, their bodies are reflecting the movements of the harmonic waveforms that produce the sound outputs, and vice versa.

Spin aims to increase an awareness of the exchanges made between the male and female with one another by stripping the context of the waltz composition and incorporating interactive melodies, which then create new environments and realizations.

‘Spin’ is constructed through hard and software technologies such as Max/MSP, soft circuitry, and a set of LilyPad Arduino.

A unique concept that combines the old tradition of ballroom dance with cutting edge technology, adding a new dimension to ‘Viennese waltzing’.

More photos from the ‘making off’ on Ambreen’s Flickr photo stream.

Christopher Campbell, William Schake and Rashad Reynolds, electrical engineering students at the University of Akron set out to solve an age old problem:

During early spring and late autumn the weather can vary quite a bit from day to day, even from hour to hour. Snow flakes in the morning and temperate weather in the afternoon. Unfortunately, while the weather may change, our clothing does not once you’ve decided what to wear when you leave the house in the morning.

The answer: creating a personal heating system, soft and ‘invisible’ enough to integrate into lightweight jackets. When the temperature is nicely warm the light jacket is doing a fine job but when the temperature is heading south the intelligent heating systems kick in keeping you comfy warm.

The team hacked a jacket by integrating various heating zones in arm, chest and back area which can be temperature controlled individually via a Palm Treo cellular phone but could be ported to Windows Mobile devices or iPhone/iPod Touch.

The heating zones can be switched on manually or automatically via temperature sensors throughout the jacket which monitor the preferred temperature setting. The desired temperature can be set for each heating area via a slider on the phones screen.

The user interface displays data like current external air temperature, manual mode status, automatic mode status, desired set temperatures, current zone temperatures as well as current estimated battery life and has a warning at 50% battery life to suggest entering “econo-mode” where the jacket would set temperatures automatically to 65 degrees to preserve battery life.

The personal climate regulating system is build around a LilyPad Arduino which is connected via a d-sub connection to the temperature sensors and the heating elements. The PDA is connected to the LilyPad through a custom cable that plugs right in to the output port of the PDA. The e-textile heating components used are sponsored from Gerbing, a Seattle based company specialized in heated clothing.

The whole system is called ‘Climate Wear‘, a great concept design to address a real world, often annoying problem many people face during the change of seasons in certain areas on our planet.

The team around Chris envisions a system optimization for a more seamless integration into clothing but they also want to keep the system ‘movable’ to reuse the smart part of this heated jacket when consumer buy a newer style of a ‘Climate Wear’ ready jacket.

Can one of the outdoor apparel brands pick this up and have it ready for next autumn? I love the idea to control my jackets’ temperature via an iPhone App.

Ricardo Nascimento, Ebru Kurbak and Fabiana Shizue, students of the Kunstuniversität Linz, Austria, created an interesting interactive clothing item which is ‘feather rising’ literally and figuratively.

Their project, the Taiknam Hat is a kinetic head-wear that reacts and animates in accordance with the changes in its surrounding medium wave radio signals.

Taiknam Hat is an attempt to materialize the electrosmog, especially the contribution of immensely used cell-phones, by emulating horripilation, an automatic instinctive reaction of living creatures to sources of irritation and stress.

Horripilation can be defined as the erection of hairs or feathers in various species under certain emotional conditions (better known as goose bumps in human body) is a temporary and local change in the skin.

I like to idea of using clothing as extension or should I say ‘recreation’ of our lost sensory information source of the skin which we cover up usually.

The Taiknam Hat is composed of fixed and movable actual feathers attached on a fabric base together with a detecting/motion-driving system. A radio frequency detector constantly traces signals which are sent to a micro-controller which in turn activates a motor that changes the kinetic behavior of the feathers.

I wonder if a similar, ‘feather rising’ effect could be achieved by using shape memory wires that react when electrical current is applied. In this way the complexity could be reduced (no motor and supporting mechanical structure), making the system more robust.

As with many other design concepts, I like the motivation, the story behind the creation that leads to a particular design. Concept designs are a great source of inspiration which can be expanded into many other ‘embodiments’ = designs.

Kerri Wallace, a textile designer from the United Kingdom, has set out to revolutionize fitness and performance apparel by designing responsive textiles with motion sensitive displays.

Her research project ‘Motion Responsive Sportswear‘ is using the correlation between heart rate and body temperature as a trigger for the visual representation of the activity level by changing the color pattern of sports apparel.

The development of unique textiles for sport activities is a growing area which merges expertise of design, science and technology to create innovative products in the area of fitness and performance apparel.

Biometric values are one of the most representative data that allow the quantification and classification of activity intensity.

The conventional method of instant feedback on workout intensity is by looking up the values of heart rate and body temperature on a wrist device.

Kerri’s Motion Responsive Sportswear takes the visualization of heart rate / body temperature by changing the colors of sports apparel which are printed with temperature specific thermo-chromic and thermo-chromic liquid crystal inks.

The use of thermo-chromic inks gives an example how advanced textile technologies can provide additional options for designer to create more dynamic and reactive clothing. It’s not the textile display many are waiting for but it is a unique option for a textile based, visual indication system.

The most gorgeous looking iPod bag we have seen so far is the Boom bag, a design concept from GRO Design, a European design agency dedicated to create successful products for A-brands around the globe.

GRO’s Boom bag design study is part of an investigation on how to use loudspeakers in a more creative way.

We have seen various types of Boom Bags before, commercially available or concepts designs but the Boombag from GRO Design is definitely the winner in terms of sleek, cool looks.

Designed as an accessory for iPods and other music players, the boom bag is made from durable and weatherproof speaker fabric. It houses a full range speaker, the electronic to dive the speakers and a rechargeable battery.

It would be the most beautiful way to carry your iPod or other portable audio player.

According GRO’s website, they are currently looking for a production partner to realize this product. If this happens, we have an exquisite choice of an Boom Box Bag in an truly 21st Century design.

GRO design was founded in 1999 by three British designer – Roland Bird, Graham Hinde and Roger Swales.

A brilliant idea for an iPod controlling glove liner based on magnetic contacts has been posted by YouTube member jdub765.

Each finger has assigned on of the five function needed for the basic navigation of an iPod. The ’switch’ is realized with small magnets in the gloves finger tip. When a finger touches the receiver for example on the back side of the other hand (glove) it activates the corresponding action on the iPod.

Brilliant is also the idea to integrate the technology into a glove liner. This allows the use of different gloves pulled over it, the glove liner control works independent from the outer glove. How do I love such modular, flexible system.

The use of an magnet as electrical switch has been around in bags and other concepts before, but using it for gloves (and why not for clothing as well) is certainly a field that should be considered by future Haute Tech designers as an option to add interactivity to our wardrobe.

It’s simple, potentially cheap to make and reliable judging on the many magnetic closures on bags and clothing that have been in the market for a long time.

Check out the video for a demonstration of the iPod controlling glove:

[via: TUAW]