Fleshing out the creative side of wearables and smart materials

Filed in archive Events on November 14, 2006

Two events last week showcased the creative side of wearable technology, which nanotech will no doubt play a major role in.

Fleshing Out: Wearable Interfaces, Smart Materials and Living Fabrics was part of V2_ in Rotterdam.

V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam-based Virtueel Platform, organized the event on the theme of close-to-the-skin technology. Recent developments in science, including DNA and stem cell research, tissue culturing, smart materials and wearable technology, have a growing impact on how we perceive materials and clothing in design practice.

Wearable technologies and smart fabrics bring together computing, biotechnology, nanotechnology and other materials sciences to reshape our very understandings and experiences of embodiment and embodied interaction.

Meanwhile, the Make Your Own Wearable Workshop and RFID and the Internet of Things Workshop were going on at Mediamatic in Amsterdam.

RFID plays a pivotal role in joining the physical world with the digital. An object tagged with an RFID chip has a unique digital identity. Any kind of online data can be linked to these unique ID's. Here is where the real world and the internet become two faces of the same reality. Things go online, in other words, an internet of things evolves.

Nanotechnology is already contributing to smart wearables like the SmartShirt and SmartBra, and it's good to see people looking ahead at how they will shape the future as well. Hat tip to purse lip square jaw. (image Mediamatic)