WEARABLE TECHNOLOGIES IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

This project was completed in the first COLAB class Wearable Technologies. Matt and Lily designed, built and programmed stuffed animal with brains. These subversive little cuddlies were designed to interrupt meetings if issues are not being addressed. Squeezing any one animal for two seconds sends a radio signal to all the animals and they all light their LED eyes at once causing a stir and interrupting the meeting. Nice idea and terrific execution.
Wearable Technologies was taught collaboratively between the Art dept. and the Design dept. by professors Olivia Robinson and Michael McAllister along with graduate assistants Steve Belavorich and Hye Rin Yang.

Click here to read the New York Times article online.

WEARABLE TECHNOLOGIES

This semester COLAB sponsored an interdisciplinary class called “Wearable Technologies”. We had sixteen students from 5 different majors including Fashion Design, Industrial and Interaction Design, Fiber Arts/ Material Studies, Photography, and Computer Arts. Through hands-on projects we intersected electronics, programming, and the body. The electronics mostly centered on using the Lilypad microcontroller and various sensors. The amazing part is that art and design students were able to tap these open source technologies to express their concepts through working prototypes. We saw quite a range of prototypes from socks that light up at night; body driven interfaces for computer games; several reactive jackets for signaling attraction, aversion, or for exaggerating gestures; a knit hat that whispers advice from grandma; quite a few interactive art experiences; stuffed animals with intelligence; furniture that remembers your presence; inflatable dresses; and several polemic projects posing questions of technology and medicine; and many other interesting works… The students showed their final projects at the Grand Opening of COLAB to very interested crowds of people.

The class finished last week with a talk and critique by brilliant guest artist Di Mainstone. Di studied fashion design at Central Saint Martins College of Art, London and is here in the states for a few months having just completed a residency at V2 Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam. Following presentations and critique of each student’s final project, Di gave a digital presentation of her projects and design methods. Her work includes experimental fashion collaborations with engineers, dancers, and architects and relies on constant and fearless experimentation. The last project she showed included interlocking dresses that trigger pools of light when connected. She gave all of us a lot of inspiration and we hope to have her back in the future.

One of the student projects, “The Enchantress,” by Tim Westbrook included a dress designed to inflate when the wearer blows across her hand. The Post Standard printed a photo of Tim’s project in the paper on Nov 21. Very nice. And we believe that the New York Times will soon publish an article on a project by the student team of Matt Kalish and Lily Chong. For their project, “Stampede”, they hand sewed soft stuffed elephants that secretly have micro-controllers for brains. These cuddly little subversive animals are to be handed out in large group meetings and are programmed to light the eyes of all the other elephants in the room if just one of them is squeezed for 2 seconds, creating an interruption in the meeting. Lily and Matt put a lot of effort into resolving their concept into beautiful working prototypes.