A while ago RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tagging of apparel has been a literally hot item which soon cooled down rapidly.

RFID tagging of apparel using woven or embroidered RFID antenna typically on labels of apparel would allow a wireless logistic control from production floor to inventory control at the shops.

The potential risk of seamless (= hidden) integration of RFID label into our clothing could come from the dark forces using it to track every movement of every smart clothing wearer across the world – at least in theory. This reason set a huge roadblock to a FRID enabled apparel future.

It’s a little sad that such – theoretical – misuse of an otherwise useful function is stopping development at an early stage. I am using a knife to cut my steak on the plate but – theoretically – I could kill someone with that knife as well. I guess you get the point.

How cool the use of RFID tagging for apparel could be is demonstrated by Gomus, a Brazilian Sound Branding agency which links the clothing purchase experience with music experience inside a fitting room.

The RFID tagged apparel once brought into the fitting room will activate an associated background music depending on the apparels nature and style.

Yeah, this is not ricochet scion from technology point of view but a very cool concept, much better than to have the monotone, standard sound servings in most shops.

Maybe using FRID enhanced clothing could be used to open doors for me, to get the barrister get’s started preparing my regular coffee refill as soon as I enter to coffee shop. Oh there would be lot’s of nice little conveniences attached to a simple RFID enabled, branded T-Shirt from hospitality to entertainment business.

Maybe RFID tagging in apparel is not such a evil idea after all.

[via: PSFK]

The Pulse Sensor is a plug-and-play ready component that hooks up to the Arduino platform which opens a ton of possibilities to incorporate biometric data into wearable electronic designs thanks to it’s very small form factor.

The creator of the Pulse Sensor, Joel Murphy and Yury Gitman, set up a Kickstarter account to get the necessary funding and move that great idea from  prototype stage into mass produced, open source reality.

The Pulse Sensor works similar to a optical heart-rate pulse sensor, picking up the blood flow rate, preferable on a ear lobe or finger tip, via photodiode. It is not intended to be of medical grade accuracy but still – it gives highly reliable values according the the duo’s own testing.

With just 1/2 inch in diameter (about 12mm), looking like a piece of jewelry and having two holes to sew the button shaped Pulse Sensor to fabric, this little bugger is inviting itself for an easy integration into wearable tech designs that react and act in sync with the heart beat of the wearer.

You can find all the details about the Pulse Sensor on Kickstarter and on The Pulse Sensor home page. If you want to be one of the first to get your hands on the Pulse Sensor – you can still pledge your contribution to the already well funded project until Sept 7 and get the Pulse Sensor Kit including Software & Source Code, PDF User-Guide, and a “Special Thanks” on PulseSensor.com

[via: GizmoWatch]

Stock Markets are in the spotlight today more than usual so I thought to look for something fitting to all the Stock Market talk but of course with a wearable technology touch.

To my surprise and thanks to a fabulous wearable tech project from emerging artist Erin Lewis, currently studying Integrated Media and Wearable Technology at OCAD University, the ‘Stock Market Lingerie‘ is the perfect match.

Erin’s motivation for this project comes from the relationship between sex and the stock market (money).

Her research uncovered the ‘hormonal changes in men who play the stock market‘ such as elevated testosterone levels when placing successfully big profit deals which in turn leads to even more higher risk taking behavior until disaster strikes ( the last few words are mine).

Surprisingly or not – women love such behavior and are more attracted to these big ticket players. Before going too deep into social behaviors I refer you to Erin’s project blog for further reading.

At this space we have a deeper look into the functionality of the ‘Stock Market Lingerie’ which is powered by a LilyPad Arduino and 2 Xbee radios.

As the man undresses the woman, the undoing of each clasp of the bustier triggers a web-based update on the latest stock market trades via Yahoo! Finance.

Oh well – one has to be a banker to get turned on by stock quotes in this way but besides that – I like the idea of combining so very much (or not) different parts of our life in a very personal, wearable tech enabled clothing item.

In it’s current design the ‘Stock Market Lingerie’ is communicating with the computer to make the visual update of stock movements but she imagines a upgrade of the ‘Stock Market Lingerie’ to give it a voice, to read out the stock quotes each time another clasp is unhooked.

I hope this article and the work of Erin Lewis can inspire and cheer you up a bit, technologically.

Carbon monoxide is part of cigarette and cigar smoke as well as car exhausts highly concentrated on road sides is the silent killer of our time. These gases are invisible and work over time to kill.

Sue Ngo and Nien Lam, two former students at NYU Tisch School of the Arts came up with a brilliant, visually powerful design to remind one self and the polluters how harmful their behavior is.

Their interactive fashion project called ‘Warning Signs‘ uses color changing, Thermochromic fabric with muscle wire integrated to heat up a vein pattern on the lung or heart organ shapes on the sweatshirt.

A carbon monoxide sensor inside the sweater picks up the pollution level and depending on the concentration of the carbon monoxide in the atmosphere around the wearer, the veins will light up more intense as the pollution level increases.

The ‘Warning Signs’ project reminds me to a similar smoking visualization project a few years ago made by Fiona Carswell called the ‘Smoking Jacket’ which featured a pair of lungs at the front and the wearer exhales the cigarette smoke into a pocket in the jacket containing lung image behind a transparent foil. Over time the exhaled smoke will change the lung image visualizing the harmful effect of second hand smoking.

Back to the future, the ‘Warning Signs’ sweater from Sue Ngo and Nien Lam gives a much faster, instant visualization of the environmental degradation caused by carbon monoxide but a range of other sensors sniffing for different harmful gases could be added to show in a playful yet very meaningful way how our environment is attacking us all day.

warning signs from Susan Ngo on Vimeo.

After watching this video clip I might think twice before taking a stroll along a busy road – but …. that’s exactly the point of this design, creating the awareness of what is going on around us.

Considering the high attention wearable technology attracts lately it is not surprising that big and mighty companies like Microsoft, and I am sure other companies in the same league, are busy to explore the possibilities and opportunities of wearable technology.

Jennifer Darmour at electricfoxy.com managed to have a sneak-peek at the Microsoft  Research Center and talk with Asta Rosweay, Senior Research Designer and User Experience Designer Sheridan Martin Small who created The Printing Dress, a highly interesting concept design that connects the distant past of communication with the present from of tweeting communicating.

A brief description of ‘The Printing Dress’: in the distant past, besides verbal communication, the printed word on paper played an essential part in the development of our civilization.

Fast forward into the 21st Century, printed words on paper are almost completely replaced by dots on a screen, the words and communication compressed into 160 characters strings and tweeted across the globe.

Asta Roseway and her team’s aimed to design a dress to visualized with the use of wearable technology developments the old-meets-new and how this could possibly influences the future of fashion.

The result is a dress made almost entirely of paper, symbolizing the past and connects with todays (wearable) technology and communication forms like tweets. ‘The Printing Dress’ visualizes the constant flow of our always-online, continuous stream of messages.

The laser-cut buttons remind me very much on the keyboard of (very) old type writers. A sweet-romantic touch to a high-tech garment.

See and hear in the video below what Jennifer could find out at the Microsoft Research Center about’ The Printing Dress’

Electricfoxy talks with Asta Roseway at Microsoft Research from Electricfoxy on Vimeo.

Can you wear ‘The Printing Dress’ – most likely not. Will we see this in next spring/summer collection – I am sure not. ‘The Printing Dress’ is an artistic work that stretches and challenges our conventional way of thinking. And because of such artistic creativity there has always been progress for the every-day-life.

[via: electricfoxy]

Reporting back to duty on talk2myShirt after some forced out-time on my side. I missed the daily blogging, hunting down the latest and greatest inventions but most of all, staying in touch with the community.

But the dark ages are over and I am happy to be back into the sunny side of wearable technology. Much work has do be done, a lot of creativity was flowing over these past few month and I ma now in a catch-up mode.

To celebrate my home-coming I have made some slight changes on the blog layout, ‘modernized’ a bit and cleaned up some dusty stuff. Any other feature you would like – please shoot them via the comments.

The most important update on the blog is the addition of the eTextile Lounge page which helps you to connect each week eerily to the fabulous online-live video/audio textile meet-up on uStream.

In case you don’t know yet – eTextile Lounge is a weekly show founded and moderated by Lynne Bruning with the aim to connect wearable technology enthusiasts around the globe to share experiences, talk about know-how resources and to introduce the latest innovations and projects.

Click over to the eTextile Lounge page (the link is also at the top navigation area) and check out what  happened in the past and join one of the future shows.

To bridge the time between each show I will make sure you get your daily portion of eTextile news right here on talk2myShirt.

‘Haute Tech’: Turning the Lights On is the headline of a recent article in the Fashion & Style section of The New York Times, featuring the fashion illumination designs by Moon Berlin, a Haute Tech fashion design house founded by Brigitte Franken and Christian Bruns.

It looks to me as wearable illumination technology is putting a spotlight on wearable technology,  generating greater public awareness. Not really a surprise to me – presenting textile illumination never fails to ignite excitement and imagination of people.

Clothing with active light elements that radiate instead of reflect light, light elements that response to movement of the wearer or other stimuli touches peoples emotions, pleasant emotions such as surprise, curiosity, joy and smiles.

I am not a fashion expert who evolved into a hybrid between the two worlds, the technology and fashion but may vision of the past might become soon reality as I can clearly see that certain theologies like the textile illumination will become soon part of a fashion designers tool/material box to choose from when designing the next collection.

Moon Berlin’s first collection includes skirts, blouses, dresses and even handbags each featuring beautifully designs illumination elements giving them a sophisticated, techno-savvy look perfectly blending into our digital age society.

According to the NYT article the prices range between €1,000 for a silk shirt and go up to $2,750 for a gown. A price point not for the everyday outfit but these are gorgers looking high street fashion designs and the price is not (only) related to the integrated technology.

source: The New York Times

Joanna Berzowska was one of the first personalities I got to know at the begin of my wearable technology dedication. She is one of the pioneers in the wearable electronic space, creating insightful and highly innovative technologies and designs over the past seven years.

Joanna founded XS Labs in 2002, in her first year at Concordia University, positioning XS Lab as a design research studio with focus on innovation in electronic textiles and reactive garments.

At the center of research at XS Labs is the development of enabling technologies, methods and materials in the form of soft electronic circuits and composite fibers — as well as the exploration of the expressive potential of soft reactive structures.

To list down all the innovative, inspirational work Joanna and her XS Lab team has made over these past seven year would result in a very long blog posting but fortunately, Joanna did this work very nicely in form of gorgeous looking and highly informative catalog in PDF format titled ‘XS Labs – Seven years of design research and experimentation in electronic textiles and reactive garments’.

This link directs you directly to the Catalog.

This 70 page catalog is a must read for wearable technologists and is certainly a great enrichment for students supporting their research studies in field of wearable technology.

Get the catalog – load it on your tablet and have it at your fingertips wherever you go.

Congratulation to Joanna and the XS Lab team for sharing seven years of amazing work.

The fascination, the desire to add sparkle to clothing has a long history going back decades if not centuries of fashion design. Throughout fashions history designer came up with ideas to add different materials to their designs, materials that reflect light and add emotional as well as style sparkle to our wardrobe.

Thanks to the recent developments in wearable technology and the creativity of a new generation of fashion/techno designer these passive, light reflecting sparkle elements can be transformed into active style elements, painting aesthetic and mood reflecting transformation on clothing.

One of the many examples on how young designer embrace the wearable technological possibilities is design student Laura Andrews who created together with her engineering boyfriend the Umi Hotaru or’Firefly of the Sea’ dress with discrete light elements that creates mystic light effects, diffused by layers of chiffon and tulle fabric.

A unique test is the addition of a sling bag with integrated solar panels collecting solar energy during the day and connects to the dress in the evening to bring the sparkle of the dress to life. No fossil fuel resources are needed, it uses clean energy on a beautiful styled dress that is pleasantly to look at by day an night.

For many people it is till somewhat alien to have active style elements on clothing. We are used to the fact that clothing is static, does not interact with the wearer or the environment.

Sometimes humans can not follow the speed of technological development but over time humans always evolve and embrace the possibilities of new technologies. Active clothing that matches our personalities, that adapt as we adapt to our environment will become as natural as our love to glass, metal and paint glitter elements we love on our clothing today.

via: Electricfoxy

Syuzi over at Faschioning Technology is very busy organizing the first major event in wearable technology of 2011, the FashionWare SXSW exhibition on March 18th and 19th in Austin, Texas.

The FashionWare show will bring on stage the most advanced and beautiful wearable tech garments of today. Here is a short list of some of the highly interesting designs awaiting the visitors to see: Klight, designed by Mareike Michel, Laser Suit from Wei-Chieh Shih, Petal Dress by Amy Winters, 3Elctromode with designs from Valerie Lamontage and Magalie Cn, Bats Have Feelings Too by Lynne Bruning and the Twinkle Pad by Diana Eng.

Check out the video below, made by Syuzi as teaser for the FashionWare show and admire all the creativity and aesthetic designs, see how innovative technology transforms fashion.

FashionWare SXSW from Syuzi Pakhchyan on Vimeo.

Unfortunately I won’t be able to visit the FashionWare Show but if you attend this event please drop me a line and tell me what I have missed by not being there.

For more details check out FashioningTech.