Forget clothes with built-in iPod storage: the future is clothes that make their own music. Brush your sleeve for a marimba sound. Pat your tummy for a bongo jam. Scratch your, ahem, special area for a burst of electric guitar. Yes, walks in the country need never again be a silent trudge accompanied only by the pointless tweeting of birds and the occasional whinnying of a startled horse, thanks to a Swedish fashion student and her technician friend.
Master’s student Jeannine Han, clearly thoroughly enjoying the second year of her textiles and fashion design course at the Swedish School of Textiles, has created a lovely faux-naif flowery hippy ensemble (apparently par-modelled on the Dark Ages battle wear of early Anglo-Saxon soldiers) which has integrated sensors that react when someone gets close or touches it. Whether or not one plays one’s own clothes or invites a close, personal friend to help out with the rubbing and stroking is entirely up to the wearer.
Han describes her work as “textile design for a nomad”, the concept being that people can wander the earth, trilling and tooting to their heart’s content as they absentmindedly fondle themselves amidst the flowers, occasionally wigging out with impromtu jumper-based jams when they encounter other similarly outfitted nomads. Sounds quite the summer lark, doesn’t it?
In cahoots with technician Dan Riley, Han now plans to start a band where one or more of the band members will wear the outfit and thus play themselves.
“We want to develop the technology to make it easy to produce the clothing in the future,” concludes Han. Good for her.
A nifty video is available from the link below.
Textile Design For A Nomad from Umlaut Brikauski on Vimeo. [JW]
Engineering & Technology magazine 