Budding starlets craving the attention of the press now have a new way to ensure that all eyes are on them.
 Ricardo O'Nascimento's new piece Paparazzi Lover is an interactive dress that lights up when it's photographed. Feeding on the sea of camera flashlights it responds with 62 embedded led lights that cleverly direct our eyes to the direction of the wearer, making her the centre of the attention.






The dress was created in collaboration with Dutch fashion designer 
Anbasja Blanken during O'Nascimento's artist in residency at the Museum Quartier in Vienna for the upcoming tech-couture exhibition 
TechnoSensual. Currently being in Vienna myself I had the opportunity to speak to Ricardo about his work.



Ricardo, I think your piece is quite commercial, as I can see definitely imagine daring celebrities wanting to wear this. But I also think you're making a comment on celebrity culture. You seem to suggest a mutual dependency between the starlet and the press and in fact the dress emphasises that dependency by putting the starlet’s neediness on display. Should the woman wearing your dress have a sense humour about herself?


Yes, I think so. And I also agree that there’s…

Forster Rohner, a Swiss family run embroidery business for over 100 years, is sewing its way into e-textiles with beautiful, intricately embroidered conductive fabrics.


Using custom embroidery machines, Forster Rohner is capable of creating large production runs of custom e-broidered textiles that can be used as sensors, heating elements, or conductors for electronic components such as LEDs. They have tested and analyzed over 100 different conductive yarns for their properties such as conductivity, washability, and durability.

Embroidered Heating Fabrics and Sensors …

I'm delighted to begin the coverage of the Smart Fabrics conference by highlighting the wonderful talk by fashion technologists and assistant professor in Fashion Design at Kent State , Margarita Benitez.

Ms. Benitez's work lives in the intersection of wearables, smart fabrics and rich media. It is her focus on rich media that offers a paradigm shift in how garments will be made in the near future and the new emerging relationship between designer and consumer.

Ms. Benitez is interested in building community-based online tools for small scale "ready to make" (prêt-à-faire) fashion. 

Along…

Building on the current craze for wearable fitness products, Michele Tittarelli has designed an mp3 player with a gaming bent. The wearable personal trainer/MP3 player shares music with passersby by infecting their playlist with their own music. 

The music virus is determined to be either "good" vs "bad" if its BPM (beats per minute) can help the user achieve his set goal. If a user comes within range of a "good" virus, the two songs are mixed. The current prototype wirelessly transmits data via Xbee to Max/MSP. 

The user can also choose to brush (not accept) the song. 

The wearable Mp3 player comes in three training modes, Fun, Fun+, and Sport, which increase the daily goals of the week.…

Moondial, the fashionable technology lab headed by thought-leader Sabine Seymour, has just released their very first premium report offering insight into the trends and innovations driving the industry. 

The theme of the first introductory report is "The Super Human," focusing on the desire to go above and beyond our ordinary human powers, achievements and experiences. 

The report predominately highlights the growing number of consumer products, past, present and launching in 2012, designed for the sports footwear and…

I'm delighted to announce that I will be moderating the Crafting the Future Panel at DEAF (Dutch Electronic Art Festival) this year.

The visionaries on the panel include:

Moritz Waldemeyer

Anouk Wipprecht

Bernard Foing

Mika Satomi…

Wearable technology is often used as a medium to enhance and amplify the senses. Garments capable of monitoring CO2 levels, warn us when air quality reaches dangerous levels. Robotic exoskeletons help those who have lost the ability to walk, to learn how to run again. Technology woven close to the body is typically used to make us superhuman.

But what if technology instead is used to deprive us of our senses? Developed by Eric Siu, Tomohiko Hayakawa, and Carson Reynolds, Touchy: the Human Camera challenges this very paradigm by depriving the user of his sight. The project transforms a human into a camera that can only be actuated by touch.…

Cycling as a means for transportation is rapidly growing in the US, even in bike-unfriendly cities such as Los Angeles. The primary concern for most cyclists is visibility followed closely by comfort. 

Combining intelligent materials like water resistant, breathable organic cotton and flexible LED circuits, Sporty Supaheroe is an intelligent cycling jacket that promises to keep cyclists both safe and comfortable on the road. 

Designed by Wolfgang Langeder in collaboration with Stretchable Circuits/ Fraunhofer IZM, the coat integrates a flexible 64 RGB-LED display, an accelerometer and a 3D-gyroscope. 

 …

SymbiosisO: Voxel, the latest project by Hungarian designer eszter ozsvald and Estonian textiles developer kärt ojavee, demonstrates that even a material as gimmicky as thermochromatic (color-changing) inks can be transformed into a poetic experience. 

SymbiosisO: Voxel consists of interlocking honeycomb tiles that change from blue to transparent when touched and when activated via a mobile application.

Using an iPhone or an ipad…