Syuzi's Blog – October 2008 Archive (13)

Electroluminescent Experiments by AeoLab

Aeolab is a design and consultancy company founded by Elise Co and Nikita Pashenkov in Los Angeles.

Back in 2000, Elise made the Puddle Jumper, a lovely luminescent raincoat that would glow when it rained. The graphics on the coat were silk-screened and wired to water sensors on the jacket.…

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Added by Syuzi on October 31, 2008 at 10:04am — No Comments

A Magical Scent

Wode, by Boudicca, is a color-changing perfume that is a vibrant cobalt blue when it touches the skin (or fabric) and, within seconds, fades completely. The fragrance itself is a powerful concoction of juniper berry, cardamon, nutmeg absolute, clary sage, coriander seed and angelica root.

Under production for nearly 7 years, Wode is magical fusion of fashion, science and… Continue

Added by Syuzi on October 28, 2008 at 7:58pm — No Comments

Paper Pinhole Cameras

I adore these DIY paper pinhole cameras by Readymech. They are so low tech and produce some refreshing shots. They use 35 mm film and are fairly simple to assemble.

PDF downloads available here.

Sample photo below.…

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Added by Syuzi on October 27, 2008 at 4:18pm — No Comments

Interview with Moritz Waldemeyer

Pingmag recently interviewed Moritz Waldemeyer, the technologist extraordinare who assisted Hussein Chalayan with the Airborne video dresses and the Readings laser dresses.

Over 15,000 LEDs were embeded in the fabric of the video dresses for Hussein Chalayan’s… Continue

Added by Syuzi on October 22, 2008 at 11:30pm — No Comments

Textile Interface for Electronic Music

This beautiful woven textile is a new experimental interface created by XY Interaction. The musician becomes a performer as he composes music by simply moving his hand across the fabric.

The site doesn't explain how the textile is made by I'm going to guess that they have woven conductive traces directly into the fabric itself. I will try to confirm… Continue

Added by Syuzi on October 21, 2008 at 6:00pm — No Comments

Swarovski Crystal LED Prototype

I've been experimenting with embedding LEDs into various materials. The latest, and my favorite so far, is an LED embedded inside a Swarovski Crystal. There are a number amazing decorative lighting projects you can create with this simple yet astonishingly beautiful enhancement of an ordinary 3mm LED bulb.

Glass crystals work better than plastic to refract the light emitted from the LED. Also a wide spectrum LED should be used.… Continue

Added by Syuzi on October 20, 2008 at 7:30pm — 2 Comments

New E-textile Kits from Sparkfun

This weekend at the Maker Faire in Austin, I got my hands on the new e-textile kits from Sparkfun.

The Lilypad E-sewing Kit is a great starters kit for individuals tackling their first wearable LED project. The components in this kit can be used for either the… Continue

Added by Syuzi on October 19, 2008 at 6:30pm — 5 Comments

DIY Electronic Modules

Studio 5050 has created a nice set of DIY electronic modules to rapidly build and prototype wearables. Although they don't offer them up for retail yet, from their site, it looks like we may soon have a new set of electronic building blocks to tinker with. I haven't gotten my hands on them yet, so I can't provide a helpful review.

So far they have the following module prototypes… Continue

Added by Syuzi on October 15, 2008 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Butterfly Dress — Electronic Fashion

According to the artist Alexander Reed, the Butterfly Dress functions:

as an insulating layer between their wearer and the outside world, are in the perfect position to instigate conversations beyond branding and style.

The dress itself is embedded with three electrodes that listen for your heartbeat and map the data to control the… Continue

Added by Syuzi on October 10, 2008 at 9:30am — No Comments

Soft Breadboard

A homemade breadboard made form soft conductive materials: stripes of conductive foam, cloth and some thread.

Here are the innards. Quite easy to make!

From the guys at… Continue

Added by Syuzi on October 6, 2008 at 3:30pm — No Comments

Smart + Sustainable Clothes— Wearable Technology

To call the eco-friendly garments made by Indarra DTX "smart" is quite a bit of a stretch, but this Buenos Aires firm does make some stylish techno-garb to power your personal devices and control your iPod.

What intrigues me here is the dubious relationship between coupling "high tech" + "sustainable." Can wearable garments really be "eco-friendly"? How near is "green"… Continue

Added by Syuzi on October 2, 2008 at 8:30pm — No Comments

Awesome Video about Magnetic Fields

The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries . All action takes place around NASA's Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries . Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers' produced by fleeting electrons . Are we observing a series of… Continue

Added by Syuzi on October 2, 2008 at 4:30pm — 2 Comments

Bio-feedback Wearables Kit

Yay! Companies are FINALLY! smarting up and offering developers kits for designers, researchers, product developers (and crafters I might ad) to incorporate their products into wearable prototypes.

The latest offering by Textronics, Inc. is a kit that contains stretchy textile electrodes that can be cut and sewn for custom applications. The fabric sensors offer a… Continue

Added by Syuzi on October 1, 2008 at 11:30am — 3 Comments