Photo by Danny Moloshok/Reuters
Love Twitter? You might be a Twitterholic if you’re compelled to tweet #everystepyoutake. Like @theGrammys.…from your dress. Case in point: British singer Imogen Heap, who showed up at the music awards in a crazy-amazing “Twitdress,” complete with a giant flashing necklace that scrolled real-time tweets from her fans.
For the shoemakers at Adidas, plain ol’ reality is a snooze-inducing yawnfest. Its Augmented Reality Shoe Game Pack, a collection of five “experiential” men’s sneakers due in select Champs Sports and Eastbay stores this month, is designed to kick things up a notch by placing a three-dimensional virtual world at your finger…uh…toe tips.
You’ve MySpaced, Facebooked, Plurked, and Tumblred. Tweeting your life in 140 characters or less was only the next logical move. But if all this public posturing still rates as undersharing, take heart: You can now microblog with every step you take. Ricardo Nascimento, an artist and multimedia producer from Brazil, has created the Rambler, a pair of sensor-equipped sneakers that tracks movement and then blabs about it on Twitter.
If information is your drug, consider Asus an enabler of the worst kind. The electronics maker unveiled a family of conceptual, data-gathering devices at the Consumers Electronic Show on Tuesday, including the Waveface Ultra, an Internet-ready smartphone you can snap around your wrist like a bracelet or watch. And if a flexible OLED wristband that streams information 24/7 isn’t cool enough for you, get this: You control it by gesturing with your fingers. Click below the fold for a video demo that will have you rattling your kids’ piggy banks for change.
Oh your aching back—if only your significant other would throw the same zeal into working out those knots as he (or she) does dodging AK-47s in the latest iteration of Grand Theft Auto. (How many cars are there left to steal, anyway?) Avoid potential domestic altercations with the Massage Me, an electronics-embedded jacket that turns your back into a game controller.
Personal Jetsons-esque jet packs not withstanding, you only need to take a gander at these brilliant examples of wearable technology for proof that the future has arrived. Although pie-in-the-sky concepts like kinetically powered music players and solar-powered beanies abounded this year, we teased out the best ideas that had working prototypes already in place. (Some, like Zegna’s solar-powered jacket and Sonic Fabric’s cassette-tape fedoras are even available for purchase.) Have an inkling of what the next big thing is likely to be? Cast your vote below!
Photo by marcoguy
Want to talk about a sight for sore eyes? Diabetics could soon be weeping tears of joy over a new noninvasive technology that would make the ritual of drawing blood throughout the day ancient history. A biochemical engineer at the University of Western Ontario has developed contact lenses that change color in response to spikes and dips in the wearer’s glucose levels. The secret: Ultra-teeny nanoparticles that react chemically with glucose molecules in tears to produce a shift in hue.
Dressing for your climate gets literal with Diffus’s Climate Dress, which the Danish design company has laced with hundreds of tiny LEDs that respond to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Powered by an Arduino Lilypad microprocessor and a carbon dioxide detector, the haute-tech frock uses conductive embroidery to transmit information to the hand-stitched lights, resulting in patterns that range from slow pulses to rapid flashes depending on the concentration of the greenhouse gas.
The ecological benefits of Jung Dae Hoon’s conceptual bracelet-watch-phone hybrid might be somewhat of a stretch, but you have to admit that the Dial is one cool customer, with a light-projected rotary dial that responds to touch, along with interchangeable skins that transform its look from elegant to sporty to pure luxury in no time flat.
Designers Alyce Santoro and Julio Cesar have topped their recycled mix-tape neckties—quite literally—by trying their hands at high-tech millinery. Their old-school fedoras, inspired by German artist Joseph Beuys’ trademark topper, are anything but fusty: They’re tightly woven from recorded cassette tape that becomes audible when you run a tape head across the fabric surface.
Night cycling should be attempted only by the very bold—and the very cautious. But if your gas-guzzler-eschewing, two-wheeling proclivities extend past sundown, staying safe with the right gear can be a matter of life and death. Looking like Bruce Boxleitner in TRON, the inspiration for Cordaround’s Urban Awareness Jacket, couldn’t hurt, either. (Click below the fold for a video demo.)
The past and future collide with composer Miya Masaoka’s LED Kimono, a high-tech garment that cuts a time-honored silhouette. But the kimono, which has 444 individually controlled LEDs embroidered along the voluminous length of one sleeve, isn’t just a flashy fashion statement—it’s also an interactive light-and-sound instrument that responds to sound and movement.
‘Tis the season for the flu, and if the regular strain wasn’t bad enough, we have a new, porcine terror to contend with. These brightly patterned medical face masks, however, may ward off H1N1 and its brethren simply by virtue of being stylish—looking like Wacko Jacko in his latter days notwithstanding. Designed by Marjan Kooroshnia, a Swedish textile-design student, these face masks have a bonus feature: They’re printed with thermochromic ink that changes color with any uptick in breathing temperature.
Another finalist in Designboom’s Green Life contest, this noggin- and hand-warming duo by Germany’s Yiran Qian is one solar-power concept we could see ourselves wearing. (The talents of most engineering geeks don’t always extend to aesthetics…which poses a problem.) Artfully arranged into snowflakes, Endless Warm’s ultrathin solar panels harness the power of the sun and convert into life-giving heat. …
Talk about a dance, dance revolution: The Dancepants Kinetic Music Player, a shortlisted entry in Designboom’s Green Life competition, makes you work for tunes. (May we suggest “I Like to Move It” for your playlist?) Designed by Inesa Malafej and Arunas Sukarevicius from Lithuania, the Dancepants converts kinetic energy from running or dancing into electricity for your MP3 player.
Photo by J.B. Spector/Museum of Science and Industry
It seems like everyone has a cause to tout these days, from health care reform to gay marriage to…ahem…making fashion more sustainable. Instead of feverishly emailing your friends, tweeting, and updating the “Causes” tab on your Facebook profile, why not get your clothing to do the talking for you? CuteCircuit’s mesmerizing Galaxy Dress lets you advertise your message all over your body with the help of 24,000 full-color LEDs, making it pretty difficult to ignore what you have to say! Click below the fold for a haunting video demonstration.
We can’t all afford $750 solar-powered jackets to keep us toasty when the mercury takes a swan dive, but when the alternative is to bundle up with more layers than an onion-fanciers’ convention, Uniqlo’s supremely affordable, lightweight heat-generating innerwear for men and women appears nothing short of inspired. So does the HeatTech fabric that absorbs your body’s moisture and converts it to heat—at first blush, anyway.
When it comes to the extremes we’ll go to achieve someone’s arbitrary ideal of beauty, at least these light-up eyelashes aren’t permanent. We’re not sure if they’re meant to be facetious or an earnest effort to pander to Asian women who desire to make their eyes appear bigger and/or look like a refugee from a sci-fi Cosplay convention. We’ll admit to one cool touch, however: The LED lashes are equipped with inclination sensors that track movement, so you can turn the lashes on or off by tilting your head. Click below the fold for an…um…illuminating video.
Attendees at this year’s PopTech conference in Camden, Maine, were handed the Swag Bag to End All Swag Bags on Thursday: a messenger that transforms into a portable, solar-powered light source. A collaboration with Timbuk2 and the Portable Light Project, the FLAP (Flexible Light and Power) is a next-generation messenger bag with solar panels that can be charged in the day, then used to power a built-in LED light—or a small mobile device—at night.
When clothing is restrictive or otherwise uncomfortable, you pull, pinch, and generally exert more energy than the act of wearing it alone requires. But what if you wore uncomfortable and restrictive clothing on purpose? “Captain Electric and Battery Boy,” developed by XS Labs, is a collection of three dresses that use energy from movement to generate electricity in the form of lights or sound. Instead of camouflaging the power-generating mechanisms, however, the Captain Electric dresses integrate those features in a visible way, with a deeper, almost philosophic motive.
