How technology can enhance fashion design has been nicely demonstrated by Tine Beez, a graduate of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design with her ‘Fashion meets Technology‘ active wear collection unveiled last May.

The inspiration of her collection is drawn by the mountaineering legend George Mallory, using natural fiber combined with cutting edge wearable technologies to create  functional and visually appealing outdoor fashion for very chilly days.

While designing the ‘Fashion meets Technology’ Tine studied carefully the needs of mountaineers while in extreme cold environments which require thick layers of clothing but at the same time being able to move and act unobstructed.

Natural healing fibers such as Milk- Pearl and Aloe Vera help moisturize the skin and stimulate blood circulation in the outfit’s inner layers while Nano-technology is used to enhance wind protection and waterproofing in the outer layers without changing the fabric’s natural properties.

To protect against hitting rocks or other obstacles while in the rough outdoors, shock absorbent pads from d3o have been integrated into the garments to assist in safety and accident prevention.

Besides the comfortably considerations in the clothing design Tine did not forget to comfort the should of the wearer by adding the ConnectedWear system from Fibretronic to the outfit.

ConnectedWear is adding iPod control into clothing allowing to maneuver through the music collection while the iPod itself stays safe and warm deep inside the mountaineering clothing, away from the harsh environment of Mt. Everest.

[via: Dexigner]

Designer, artist Lauren McCarthy, currently an MFA student in the UCLA Design / Media Arts program developed ‘Tools for Improved Social Interacting‘, a series of wearable devices that use sensors to condition the behavior of the wearer to better adapt to expected social behaviors.

An interesting design concept that uses technology enhanced clothing to assist, train and support the wearer to ‘behave’ according to social expectations in a given life situation.

At first you might think: ‘for what on earth do I need social interaction aid in my clothing!’. Does our increasing dependance on computer aided socializing via Facebook or Twitter make us unable to interact with real persons?

This might become a problem in future but Lauren’s ‘Tools for Improved Social Interacting’ could proof to provide an interesting design for persons who need to (re)learn social interaction due to physical or physiological problems.

‘Tools for Improved Social Interacting’ include the Happiness Hat that trains the wearer to smile more. The smile size is detected via an enclosed bend sensor attached to the cheek. If the wearer stops smiling a servo motor moves a metal spike into the head proportional to the degree of smile.

The Body Contact Training Suit requires the wearer to maintain frequent body contact with another person. If the wearer stops touching someone for too long, static noise begins to play through headphones sewn into hood. A capacitance sensing circuit measures skin to skin body contact via a metal bracelet sewn into the sleeve.

The Anti-Daydreaming Scarf contains a proximity sensor detects if the wearer is engaged in conversation with another person. While he/she is, the scarf vibrates periodically to remind the wearer to pay attention and stop daydreaming.

Three interesting concepts which use our second skin, our clothing as medium to assist and to influence our social interaction – inspirational and expandable.

Lauren McCarthy’s ‘Tools for Improved Social Interacting’ can be found at SIGGRAPH 2010 from Sunday, 25 July through Thursday, 29 July 2010 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The month of May is often associated with Love like ‘love is in the air’ when nature awakes finally from the winter hyper-nation and starts it’s new love-life cycle.

What better time could there be to introduce another project from the AiQ Smart Clothing Design Contest in Taiwan, the Silver Wing Award winning Love Shirt designed by students at the National Taiwan University (NTU).

The Love Shirt which comes in a pair to show off it’s capability is designed to express the love of the wearer to another person at two levels: a visual and a tactile communication between the garments to express the affection between to love birds T-Shirts.

The visual indication is realized via an heart shape on the T-Shirt, each shirt has one half of the heart. When the two love birds come close the heart half’s on the shirts start to illuminate, increasing the intensity as the distance becomes shorter.

With the press on a button inside the Love Shirt, a tactile signal can be send to the other shirt, creating a sensual tickle via an integrated vibration module. The communication between the two shirts is done wireless.

Under the supervision of Assistant Professor Shu-Yi Hong the students Jerry Chen, YS Chang, Wen Hsiao, Willie Ding and art designer CY Yu (invited from  YunLin S&T University) design the Love Shirt concept as interaction clothing, clothing not only to react on the surrounding environment like temperature, light or sound but to interact with each other, clothing that communicates, shares information about the wearer.

No need to be concerned over privacy issues, the team envisions some provisions like unique ID to prevent our future T-Shirts to disclose our intimate secrets, it will only share information the wearer has specifically given permission.

I am always fascinated by innovative design concepts that merge our virtual existence with the physical space in which we live, especially if it includes technology enhanced clothing.

A team of designer formed at the Canadian Film Centre, Interactive Arts and Entertainment Program, Kathleen Climie, Rose Bianchini and David McCallum created the ‘Neighbourhoodie’, a hoodie that combines the fun and dynamic of street games like ‘zombie tag’ with the technological experience space young people grow up today of online or computer games.

Integrated into the hoodie is a system of proximity sensors, speakers and lights to augment game play.

To start the game ‘Survival Tag’ as shown in the video clip below, players connect the iPhone / iPod touch to the ‘Neighbourhoodie’. Once the hood it put over the head the game starts and the hunt is on.

Lights, sounds in the hoodie are activated to indicate various players stages and proximity of others with the aim to ‘knock’ out, to tag opponents until one survivor is left over. Pull down and up the hood again and the next battle starts.

The Wii gaming system made a first step to get people out of the couch and become again more physical engaged while playing games. The ‘Neighbourhoodie’ has the potential to motivate us to leaving not only the couch but the house by playing hybrid games that partly happen in the real world and partly in our all important virtual world.

Along the lines of this creative design concept the is a huge inspirational space envisioning many variations of this design weaving  interactive garments and game interaction. An amazing project triggered by the combination of clothing and technology.

The integration of actuators into clothing to give tactile / physical feedback triggered by real or virtual world events is a frequently used topic among technology enhanced clothing concept designs.

Saurabh Palan, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, uses a haptic interface integrated into the Tactile Gaming Vest (TGV) designed for FPS (First Person Shooting) Games to let the player feel the pain when a bullet hits – in the game.

The force feedback comes from solenoid actuators in the chest, shoulders, front and back. Solenoid actuators are three-dimensional coils often wrapped around a metallic core which produces a magnetic field when an electric current is passed through it. You can imagine now how the gun shot is produced.

As with almost everything humans design there are multiple possible uses. What is cool for a gaming experience could as well be used as training equipment for solders or replace the messy paintball stuff with a tactile shot from the combat vest.

Soon we will have 3D television and computer monitors so the next step towards a complete immersion into the movie and virtual computer world will be the 4th, the physical dimension, experienced through our clothing.

Click over for a detailed TGV project description by Saurabh Palan.

[via: IEEE Spectrum]

Richard Etter, Diana Grathwohl and Sigmund Homolya created AwareFashion, clothing that senses and visualizes today’s invisible, digital layer of wireless networks that surround us wherever we are.

AwareFashion’s concept is based on the idea to visualize the digital environment we are living with, which surrounds use. All the radio waves, be it radio or TV broadcast, GSM for cellphones, WiFi, Bluetooth or GPS or other wireless systems.

We can’t see, smell or feel radio waves but sometimes it would be useful to know what wireless networks are reachable for us at the place we are right now.

The team envisions to integrate wireless network sensing into clothing, making us aware of the surrounding digital environment.

One of their concept designs suggests the integration of the detection antenna and electronics into a shirt to visualize GSM cellphone activity. The shirt could be worn by staff at venues where cellphones should be switches off for security or privacy reasons.

The visualization of the invisible GSM signals is done via a radio wave to light signal converting electronics. The light signals are guided to the end of the shirts sleeves via fiber optics.

Richard Etter and Diana Grathwohl created another AwareFashion design concept called AwareCuffs, sensing nearby WiFi signals.

I like the AwareFashion concept as I am very much in favor of using our future clothing as replacement of the senses we would usually have via our skin and to add new senses, making us aware of benefits or danger in our environment of things that did not exist in our evolutionary history long enough to be sensed by any of our body parts to sense them, to make us aware of the digital dimension that surrounds us.

Conway’s Game of Life has been explored before in wearable electronic by Leah Buechley or Elizabeth Fuller, showing random light pattern on dresses or jackets based on the rules of the Game of Life.

The starting point of the artificial life form comes in these examples from a random number generated by a micro chip.

The ‘Game of Life controlled by EKG Hoodie‘ from Joe Saavedra is taking Conway’s Game of Life one step further by using the heart beat to set the life cycles in sync with a real life form, the wearer, bridging the gap between physical and artificial life to create unique light animation on clothing.

What a fascinating concept design. Insightful, playful but with a deeper meaning, delighting by painting dynamic animation on clothing, reflecting the fluidity of life.

Joe used a custom circuit which includes an infrared EKG monitor that resets the game each time a heartbeat is detected.

Conductive thread form the connection grid for the 4×4 LED matrix and to the circuit board which is kept in a pocket towards the bottom of the hoodie.

The heartbeat detection is done via a infrared LED (emitter) and detector pair which can ’see’ through your finger: each time blood is pulsed through represents a heart beat (you might know these finger clips you might get during a checkup in the hospital).

It all sounds simple but I strongly advise to click over to Joe’s project blog to get the details and tips you will need to build your own ‘Game of Life controlled EKG Hoodie’. Or maybe to get inspired by Joe’s work and come up with other ideas of changing the appearance of your clothing in sync with your body.

What a great, thoughtful and inspirational concept – I give a High Five for the ‘Game of Life controlled by EKG Hoodie’

North Paw is an anklet that tells the wearer which way is North. The anklet holds eight cellphone vibrator motors around the ankle. A control unit containing an electronic compass senses magnetic north and turns on and off the motors.

At any given time only one motor is on and this motor is the closest to North. The skin senses the vibration, and the wearer’s brain learns to associate the vibration with direction, giving the wearer an intuitive sense of which way is North.

The North Paw is a follow up on the Feelspace research done at the Cognitive Psychology department of the University of Osnabrück in Germany.

The team at Sensebridge, a research and collaboration group based at Noisebridge, a hackerspace in San Francisco, CA offers the North Paw as DIY kit for $95.- containing all components and instructions needed to make your own ankle compass.

Beside the direction indication capability of this concept I could imagine to connect instead of vibration motors light sources, illuminating different parts of a dress in different colors depending on the orientation of the wearer to the north pole. Could give some cool, colorful effects on a dress.

No other product we own comes closer to our body, our skin sensory feelings than clothing and no other personal communication is more intimidate than a soft touch that triggers goose bumps or sends a tickle along the spine.

Combining both, Lina Saleem, in cooperation with the Fraunhofer IZM, designed the Hap.tickle GREETING dress which is able to give this intimate tickle feeling send by a friend or loved one via SMS from far way.

The Hap.tickle GREETING will send a trickle through your body with the help of small, vibrating motors integrated into the back and sides of the garment.

People love pocking or hugging via social networking sites like Facebook, why not going a small step further and bring over the pokes and hugs to the real world.

The Hug Shirt from Cute Circuit or the Hap.tickle Greeting dress are examples showing how future clothing can connect our physical presents with our virtual identity.

Sure, interactive clothing can never be a replacement for a real touch but two loving and caring people separated by distance, haptic clothing can serve as a temporary substitute.

[via: Fashioning Technology]

Twitter, one of the hottest social networking tools which created communities via 140 character lines looks like to become a favorite for the wearable electronic community as well.

A few short years ago, we all where happily writing lots of emails to our friends, then came Facebook to link up and expand our network. With the growing number of friends, email writing is taking too long so Twitter saves our day now by cutting our communication down to 140 characters.

The next evolution might be to let our clothing make the tweeting to free our hands for more important tasks. Our clothing is always with us, it knows what we are doing and smart fabrics will do the tweeting for us.

Twitter fashion ideas like the  TweetShirt by Stef Verheijen show the tweets via a textile display on the chest of a T-Shirt creating a dynamic pattern on the shirt and show the social network activity of the wearer.

Another twittering clothing item is the Rumbler, developed by Ricardo Nascimento and Tiago Martins. Rambler is a pair of sneakers embedded with a sensor that detects when the wearer is walking. Every step taken is tweeted as the word ‘tap’ or symbol ‘.’ depending on the pressure of each step and sent via Bluetooth to a mobile phone which uploads the tweets to Twitter. Follow me in the purest sense.

At the 52nd Grammy Awards, British songstress Imogen Heap brought live twitting to the red carpet by wearing a Twitter Dress.

The technology part of the dress is designed by Moritz Waldemeyer. The Twitter Dress sends tweets and receive tweets via an iPod Touch inside the Fendi bag. The text is sent to the necklace, displaying the message and the Twitter pictures are displayed on the iPod Touch screen which is visible from the outside through the transparent material of the bag.

No matter how playful or ‘out-of-this-world’ these concepts might look to you, clothing and the use of it to express personal interests and the association to Universities, brands, beliefs has been used since humans use clothing.

Yesterday we used printing or embroidery techniques to mark our clothing and show the association. Today we use 21st century know-how and technologies to establish the link between our clothing and the social networks we identify ourselves.