Suits cyborgs: the rise of smart mode

       The parade for Diane von Furstenberg Spring 2013 featured models wearing Google Glass. But the eye wear is adjusted so that the next tech boom is just the beginning for Smart Mode - a new genre, the "intelligent" along the lines of the phone is not your wardrobe interpreted officer.

ETextiles, mobile technologies and interactive clothing are the new buzz among designers of circuits and sensors, the new fabric and thread.

Smart Mode has been successfully integrated in various commercial markets. Manufacturers, including Smart Life and Textronics eTextiles created to give the user information about their vital signs and body movements. This proved popular in sports, health and military arenas. It is now for the fabric to measure your heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature and the level of welding possible - if we have a sweatshirt that is guaranteed against underarm sweating wish daunting task.

But the aesthetic and conceptual end of the fashion market, artists and developers push the possibilities much further, with a flexible circuit and other mobile technologies as a platform for audio, video, visual projects and connective tissue.

Tara Pattenden, a new media artist and musician, who combines technology and textiles to suits with instruments that are controlled by touch and motion interfaces to create.

"More recently, I worked on Maelstrom 2600, which is a modular synthesizer Lunetta of five monsterish costumes. Each costume has its own sound and the sound module can be plugged tentacles of people together as a leader on a synth patch manipulated.

Camille Baker, media artist, curator and researcher and Kate Sicchio, choreographer, media artist and performer, has explored the concept of "hacking the body" in its recent workshop at the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA). Piracy body offers with imagination redistribution of electric appliances and computers, to explore the biological data.

"We try to use different types of body sensors to extract, if you want the code or data of the organization and to find new ways in which you want to reuse reuse the code of the program.

This could take several external effects such as flashing or video that lead triggered by signals from the body. It may even extend to the use of medical sensors such as ultrasound sampling sugar or glucose for art projects in the future.

In addition to clothing, cosmetics, digital your body into a display Thea Baumann has appcessory 'nails metaverse, developed at ISEA in event Makeover Metaverse presented on. The nails are Metaverse Fashion stick on nails that interact with an application of interactive mobile social game to show photos and holographic pattern

Baumann is the research and development of I <3IDORU to create a project augmented reality (AR) glasses. Users will be able to slide the glasses and "Dates" experience with virtual pop stars.

"I'm looking for a new way in the digital appcessories of cosmetics and fashionable clothing, the use of the Internet and the mixed-reality environment for a medium and self-expression and transformation layer: the qualities that are the driving reason for the cosmetics and fashion industry. "

Although some is smart about artistic engagement - as Sicchio dance and video works - or stuff the party - a helmet called Blink lifier that lights up when you blink - there are also more practical management products for the consumer market. "There are shoes with GPS on the way home and items that change color with the time or the direction of your mobile phone or links to social networks, Pattenden said find. Other notable pieces are scarves to change the color to your outfit suit, gloves, and interfaces to electronic eTextiles that warns you when you receive a message can be manipulated.

Baker says eTextiles soon more high-tech in response to your smartphone. "The only thing that is really cool because now compared to when I played with him maybe ten years ago, is that there is a much larger community, to do this, there is so much history and there is much less intimidating than it was., it really seemed that some hardcore engineering, you know, at the time, but now it seems a funny thing that you do to be on a Saturday afternoon with people. "

Baker and Sicchio say on electronic DIY, they are much cheaper and easier to use. The most popular features are the Arduino, which can control the programs and physical outputs such as lights and motors and sensors such as Adafruit, which can recognize the strength, temperature, orientation, light, and are dependent on the type. There are also a growing number of drivers well suited to the craft that can carry electrical current thread.

For those who are interested in using these technologies, there are a number of ways to learn. eTextile workshops run regularly around Australia in places like Edge Brisbane and ACMI in Melbourne and there is a wealth of online resources.

How does the future look like a scene from Tron? Not according to Baker and Sicchio, that we say that expect a hidden system files that is comfortable and attractive. Instead of hauling an external device, will our clothes and our bodies an interface.

"We will be digital ones and digital cyborgs without putting much thought into it .... People who do not take notice these electronic devices once everything is all pervasive.

But there is a way to go. The current prototype Google glass still requires the carrier to attract not developed a device for the technology, the aesthetic effect. Baumann said: "Although I think the future of mobile technology challenge actually made fashionable mobile technology and the tastes and sensibilities of young consumers Google Glass - is simply not hot right now.".