a fascinating video unearthed today, from british cinemagazine Pathetone Weekly. "Eve, AD 2000" is a 1939 prediction of fashion in the year 2000. most of it looks like predictions of 1945, but a few of the ideas are eerily accurate -- like the look by a designer who shockingly predicts that skirts will nearly disappear. the man's outfit may look like a lot of science fiction, but consider what they've predicted: that he'll be outfitted with a telephone (check), a radio (check), and a belt full of candy to attract women (get on that, armani...)

sadly the designers are not named...

it's time we got around to rounding up the various sources and tools for e-textile-building that are out there. from time to time someone asks for pointers or places to start, so here goes:

ms leah buechley, PhD student at the university of colorado, has put together perhaps the most comprehensive set of DIY e-textiles materials out there. her e-textiles kit, which has become the LilyPad Arduino construction kit, now commercially available through sparkfun, is well-documented and comes with a handy how-to guide.

mouna andraos and sonali sridhar of electroniccrafts.org have a pretty extensive overview of a few electronic craft projects (many of which are textile-based) and a nice aggregation of useful materials for the building thereof.

dr. maggie orth of international fashion machines works with e-textiles for interaction and artistic design. she has a range of products for purchase including some craft kits.


nwanua elumeze at angiomatic has a fairly simple sewable LED circuit kit available for $15.

if kits aren't your bag, there are plenty of places to find flexible conductors, which are the bulk of what most people are looking for when building e-textiles (sadly, flexible actuators, ICs, PCBs, etc are much harder to find).

LessEMF.com has perhaps the most extensive array of conductive textiles and yarns available for retail. they've got it all--knits, wovens, tapes, velcro, yarn...and they'll sell you a sample pack for $10 so you can take a look at the options.

robert smith at lamé lifesaver will sell you a 200yd spool of conductive yarn for $15 canadian.

bekaert, a belgian fiber technologies company, produces bekinox, a popular 100% stainless steel yarn, and a variety of conductive textiles.

and lastly...if you're a clothing designer trying this out for the first time, the best way to go is to start with either a DIY electronics circuit-building kit (many companies sell these), or hack a kids toy for the electronics inside. try replacing the wires with textile or yarn conductors, or build your kit on something other than a printed circuit board. MAKE magazine is a great place to start, they have a lot of step-by-step instruction in electronics.

above all, don't be afraid of it! most digital circuits run on less than 9V, which isn't enough to hurt you :)

CSIRO, australia's national science agency, has recently received a grant of $4.1 million AUD for the development of a wearable power-generating and -storage garment. according to ars technica, they plan to generate electricity using piezoelectric materials in the shoulder area, and store it in flexible battery packs on the trunk.



an ambitious project, considering the amount of power that piezoelectric materials are capable of generating, and the project's goal of producing a lightweight, washable garment.

an interesting hitherto-unheard-of european space agency project: the i-garment smart suit for disaster relief agents.




the description is vague (although there is some reference to it having already been field tested), but the suit appears to monitor the location and "status" (perhaps through biosensors) of a relief worker, as well as containing a communications system.

the suit appears to be under development by portugese "technology solutions provider" ydreams.


[via engadget]

another airbag this week: this time, for protection during an avalanche.

the Life Bag backpack contains an airbag that inflates manually (by pulling a handle). should the wearer find himself in an avalanche, just pull the handle and presto: his neck and head are protected, and the airbag itself creates an empty airspace (when deflated) that can provide around 150 liters of air, should he be buried.




[via medgadget]

while american inventions such as the no-contact taser jacket take an aggressive approach to self-defense, japanese designer Aya Tsukioka offers a new strategy: hide.



her transformable skirts deploy into full-size replicas of vending machines, which are pervasive in urban japan. she's also designed handbags that transform into replicas of manhole covers--slide your valuables under them and that mugger will never know the difference.



[via NYT]

we've always maintained that motorcycling was one of the coolest design areas for protective clothing...now check out a new offering, the impact jacket. it goes for the airbag approach (as opposed to the armor approach in most motorcycle exoskeleton jackets).

Sports gear manufacturer Riddell has announced plans to launch a mass-market version of its sensor-laden American football helmet, purportedly retailing at around $1,000.



The helmet uses accelerometers to monitor impacts to the head, but, as the Time Magazine article points out, there remains no reliable way to correlate impact force to injury.

An MIT undergrad was arrested today at Logan Airport for "possessing a hoax device". She arrived at Logan wearing a black hoodie with a breadboarded LED circuit affixed to the front, carrying a handful of playdoh.

Star Simpson, the student in question, claimed the device was "a piece of art", and she was wearing it to stand out on career day.



It is debatable to us how strapping oneself with a fake bomb is art. Pointing out how prejudiced the government is against people who appear to be terrorists is one (overmade) point, but when that "appearance" is you actually *trying* to look like you're wearing a bomb? What is your point?

[via boston globe]

we admit, the twiddler chording keyboard may be the input-device-of-choice for the discerning wearables user...but it does lack that je ne sais quoi of drama. (also it has a funny name)

but for the individual with flair who needs keyboard access at a moment's notice, there's the Keyboard Quiver from dust-off. designed to "meet the needs of competitive gamers", it's more nerd-tastic than fashion-forward. but then again, it's made by a company that specializes in computer cleaning products...



(via engaget)

ever feel like high heels just don't present enough of a walking challenge?

ever wish you could add some glamour to your scuba suit?

try High Tide heels, spotted in gloucester, UK.



(via style file)

in case you were too wrapped up in the whirlwind of preparing for new york fashion week and weren't aware, it's also new york pet fashion week. (and in case you actually do something for a living and weren't aware, new york fashion week starts in 7 days.)



according to intrepid reporter lynn yeger, "Pet Fashion Week has plenty in common with human Fashion Week—mainly, all the really cute stuff is for scrawny, undernourished-looking animals.

(via the village voice)

whit hiler (nope, there's no T) evidently finds stonewashing, acid spots, and abrasion machines too tame: he distresses his attus apparel polo shirts with a shotgun.



my favorite quote from the nyt interview is this:

"we came up with this concept that polo shirts should be a little more expressive of who you are" --whit hiler

lemme get this straight: you're a guy who wants to wear a polo shirt...but not a polo shirt, see? a polo shirt with a 40 on it. or a toilet!

hipster irony out of lexington, ky.

(via NYT)

just back from the 2007 meeting of the engineering in medicine and biology society, a conference i like very much (and not just because it sounds ever-so-smart).

highlights this year:
*seems like the recent research by philips and various academic partners into capacitive electrodes (see Linz et al., BSN 07 or Gourmelon and Langereis, EMBC 06) has really taken off...a good-sized handful of papers using them this year.

*the clever folks at philips research organized an invited session on motion artifacts in wearable sensors. this i think is one of the most critical emerging issues in wearable technology, and unfortunately underinvestitaged by the research community (who are often able to simply ignore inconvenient motion artifacts).

*perhaps coincidentally, several older projects who had previously not reported (or admitted) motion artifact or noise problems presented papers about efforts to reduce or deal with this type of noise. the italians involved with the MAGIC system (who have previously shown video of their t-shirt based system taking a perfect ECG from a running subject....*raised eyebrow*...) used the same kind of marker-based motion capture technique used by Mattam et al. at ETH Zurich to quantify skin stretch and garment slippage during movement, and Philips presented an exploration of various techniques to detect and/or eliminate eletrostatic noise and movement noise from the aforementioned capactive electrodes. they used two sucessful techniques--an ungrounded charge-dissipating conductive shield (easy to do and effective), and a laser beetle, an optical device used to measure distance and movement. the laser beetle i'd never heard of but is apparently cheap, tiny, and easy to use. and comes inside many optical mice :) unfortunately, the bare hardware may be only available to philips...but maybe they are hack-able from mice?

*seems that fiber-transistor research has gotten a little bit farther (certainly farther than the old starlab days!), using conductive polymers and organic semiconductors.


(Locci et al., EMBC 07)

*lastly, there was a paper on heart-rate detection by cardioballistics using weight scales (Gonzalez-Landaeta et al.). yes, maybe you are as skeptical as i absolutely was...until i actually sat on a bed (a regular bed!) eqipped with one of these scales underneath each foot at the philips research labs, and watched my full ECG waveform show up on the monitor. these scales are *crazy* sensitive, and although they are of course influenced by movement noise, probably not all that much more than comfortable wearable ECG. very reasonable for sleep research. my source tells me they do a demo in a *heicopter*.

and that's my news from EMBC...well, that and the small fact that the accelerometer is definitely the future.

the dynamic t-shirt graphic is, for better or worse, one of the more popular "mass-market" applications of wearable technology. for examples, see the recent lumalive technology from Philips, or the always-chic scrolling LED belt buckle.

[sidenote: whilst composing this sparkling piece of journalism, i was pointed to IEEE spectrum's 2007 list of winners and losers...in which Lumalive's loser qualities are discussed.]

i, as you may or may not be aware, am generally not the biggest fan of this type of wearable technology. [i could hold forth on this topic for some time, but i will spare you and instead point you to the above-linked article.]

but i have to admit, the implementation in this video, by french DJ duo Justice, is edgy, interesting, and cool. course, it's way easier in animation ;)

in a totally unrelated search, i happened to pull up this article, from the new york times in 1995. it describes the investigation of the "great ivy-league nude posture photo scandal", which sounds exciting enough, but it does get better...

as it seems, a number of ivy-league universities had a practice (c 1940-1960) of taking photos of each incoming freshman or -woman, nude, covered in various anthrometric markers. ostensibly, there are many valid research purposes for such a database. but where did it go? why is this database not widely known and used, as the ANSUR 1988 army survey is?

the author (ron rosenbaum, whose own photo was taken as an impressionable freshman) uncovers several possibilities. the first, most poignant reason, springs from the seemingly complete disregard for privacy and consent of the subjects. consider the students who matriculated at harvard, yale, princeton, vassar, etc in the 1940s-1960s. many went on to become celebrity politicians, actors, and public figures. and there are naked pictures of them somewhere?? no attempt was made to conceal identities, or even protect the photographs themselves--a set or two were discovered decades later by shocked university employees, unable to fathom why these photos may have been taken. and as a mandatory procedure, subject consent seems to have been assumed, although the process was certainly traumatic enough for many students.

but more sinister still are the overtones of eugenic research conducted at the time--the investigation of links between somatotype and personality, intellectual abilities, and future performance.

the article is great, give it a read. a twisty tale of intrigue, research, and how not to treat your human subjects.

meet jenny chowdhury, who'd rather we had a different kind of fun with video games.



her masters thesis at NYU's ITP involved the development of "intimate" video or computer game interfaces. a way, she says, to combat the phenomenon of the "gaming widow" who loses (for all intents and purposes) her partner to the addiction of gaming. in the game pictured above, "'get lucky' charms", partners must touch each other in progressively more intimate places as the game levels progress.

you can check out (mostly work-safe) videos on her website.

(via user-designer)

ipod fanatics and lovers of useless wearable technology will jump with childish delight at the chance to own their very own ipod SUIT jacket, the MUSICGIR, new from a collaboration between bagir, the "global innovative tailoring" company, and eleksen, the lovely (but often badly-applied) pressure-sensitive fabric people. and discerning UK/ROI consumers can even obtain one of these exceptional items at their local marks & spencer's, and for only £90!



hands up anyone who thinks the fabric-switches interface is easier to use than the ipod itself or the ipod remote...

samsung released a "wearable" camcorder about a year ago, it retails for about $450. they bill it as a "sports camcorder"; evidently they think that's the best market for a strap-on video camera.

this user review is great...samsung's implementation of a body-mounted camera is an absolutely classic example of the strap-it-on school of wearables, and the reviewer (while staunchly in favor of the application itself, which is unusual enough) points to many typical drawbacks of strapped-on devices.

first off, he finds it hard to position and stabilize. not surprising, considering it's body-mounted via a single (elastic?) strap. secondly, the device doesn't provide enough user feedback about the camera's orientation, especially during activity. and lastly, the actual interface has too many buttons, that are not at all intuitive and caused several significant use errors.

so let's get this straight...we took a standard video recorder, added an extendable lens bit and some elastic, and it's not doing the trick? i'm shocked, *shocked*. those buttons don't work when you can't see them? who woulda thunk...

this particular user thinks it looks really cool, which i'd say is *probably* an outlier opinion, but decide for yourself below... in the wise words of engaget, "it sounds like you might be better off with another, more full featured model -- and a roll of duct tape".





(via engaget.)

truant police officers in bangkok have a new punishment to fear: enforced wearing of a pretty pink hello-kitty armband.



the armbands are intended to discourage minor infractions like tardiness by bringing shame to offenders.

(via cemcom)