Electronics that can bend

Cambridge, Massachusetts advanced materials company, MC10, is cookin' up some amazing bendable high-performance electronics that us wearable technology folks would LOVE to get our dirty little hands on. Imagine a shirt that could monitor your heart rate without wires or clunky devices. Or garments that are flexible and move with your body as they collect your biometric data and help you live a healthier life. MC10 seems to be paving the way and rumor from the Twittersphere is that adidas is currently working with them on ... does anyone know? The future is promising.

Image source.

Controlling your devices with your mind

[gallery] Emotiv has created a wearable headset designed by 4design Pty Ltd called emotiv EPOC that allows you to control your gaming experience through your thoughts. It takes signals directly from the wearer's brain to interface wirelessly with games and computers in totally new ways. It even understands facial expressions and moods. I'm not sure if this is an incredibly exciting innovation or something to be somewhat frightened about. The headset design is somewhat intimidating looking, but I would still like to get my hands on it to give it a test run.

More info. Image source.

Events, events, events!

There are a lot of wearable technology events happening now through the next few months. Here's the growing line-up to keep your eyes on: (above image from FashionWare SXSW)

TransNatural - March 4-April 1, 2011 - Amsterdam TransNatural shows interesting attempts from art, design and science to fuse technology with nature. More info.

FashionWare - March 18-19 - Austin, Texas Syuzi Pakhchyan of Fashioning Tech is curating a show at #sxsw's new fashion component in Austin, TX. Stop by her booth if you're in the Austin area. More info.

Soft Circuit Weekend - April 2-3 2011 - San Francisco, California Led by Instructor Lara Grant at The Gray Area Foundation for the Arts will start with the history of wearable technology and end with a hands-on workshop. More info via talk2myshirt.

Smart Fabrics Conference - April 4-6, 2011 - London, UK The 7th annual Smart Fabrics 2011 will take place on 4-6 April 2011 at the Hotel Russell in London, UK and will cover topics such as the current status of innovative smart fabric technologies in the marketplace, as well as recent application breakthroughs and adoption. More info.

Intelligent Textiles Workshop - April 2011 - Ghent, Belgium Just before the Smart Textiles Salon, theUniversity of Ghent in cooperation with Plug and Wear and Systex organize a two part, three day workshop on Intelligent Textiles. More info via talk2myshirt.

Smart Textile Salon - April 18-21 2011 - Ghent, Belgium Besides informing people about intelligent textiles on a theoretical level, this workshop emphasis the practical application of the knowledge – from theory to application in real prototypes. More info.

Popkalab Wearable Technology Workshop - April 27th to 29th - Sede Tecnológica de la UNIA, Málaga/Spain In this 3 days workshop participants will be introduced to wearable technology, special flexible and conductive material (conductive fabrics, threads, yarns and other soft and squishy materials), basic electronics and will develop a wearable project using the learned techniques. More info.

Pretty Smart Textiles (PDF) - May 2-3, 6-8, 16, 19 2011 - Herning, Denmark The Exhibition Pretty Smart Textiles shows how fashion, art and technology elegantly work together to become smart textiles. More info (PDF).

Pretty Smart Textiles Workshop (PDF) - May 4 2011 - Herning, Denmark In the textile industry of the future, innovation, technology and development are key words. Students will get a unique hands-on chance to learn about future textiles and the technologies behind. More info (PDF).

DMY International Design Festival - June 1-5, 2011 - Berlin DMY Berlin is an international design network for contemporary product design. At the yearly DMY International Design Festival Berlin both renowned and young, experimental designers launch new products, prototypes and foresighted projects. More info.

ISWC 2011 - June 12-15, 2011 - San Francisco, California The fifteenth annual IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, is the premier forum for wearable computing and issues related to on-body and worn mobile technologies. More info.

Data Gathering Workout Shirt for the NFL

[gallery] One of the big opportunities in wearable technology is in professional sports where precision and performance can be tracked and improved. Under Armour has created a new line of evaluation and improvement garments. Their E39 garments track heart rate, breathing rate, g-force and body positioning. The "electronic compression baselayer" (as they describe) collects your biometric data and sends it to a computer or handheld so that you can evaluate your performance and ultimately improve it. According to Gizmodo, Under Armour will be testing these garments with 10 to 30 NFL prospects, including Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Cam Newton. I wouldn't mind trying one out myself.

Image and more info on Yahoo! sports.

Will Turnage shows off his "rocker" garment at #sxsw

[gallery] I'm currently at #sxsw interactive in Austin soaking in all the ideas, conversations and people. I was pleasantly surprised when R/GA's Will Turnage stood up in his talk with Chloe Gottlieb titled The Refrigerator Speaks: The Secret Language of Things to show off his awesomely smart "rocker" garment. To make a point about hacking into #smartthings, he created a smart shirt equipped with a Lilypad, Bluetooth, and lights that could be controlled by your cell phone. Punch in some commands and the lights would illuminate. He even added gestures. Tilt the phone right and the right side of the shirt would light up. Tilt left, and the left would light up. He then explained how he used Twitter's APIs to allow for the audience to tweet commands. Through the rest of the presentation, his shirt would light up as people tweeted about the presentation.

Turnage does a great job demonstrating how, as designers, we can take objects and services, augment them and combine them in interesting ways to create new and meaningful experiences. What are other ways to do this?

Check out this book they recommend referenced during their talk: Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design by Mike Kuniavsky.

Get a summary my sxsw visit so far on the Artefact blog.

Sneakers that take microblogging one step further

[gallery] I'm currently at SXSW in Austin where the talks are barraged with analysis and future speculation around social graphs, keeping up with them, and taking them further. Twitter and microblogging is the only way to weave your way around here. Naturally, I'd like to share this project, Rambler, developed by Ricardo O”Nascimento and Tiago Martins of Popkalab, which "aims to bring the practice of microblogging to one of many possible extremes, turning it into an automatic, thoughtless act of diffusing large amounts of slightly ambiguous, repetitive and arguably useless personal information". Continue reading on Popkalab.

I could really use a pair of these right now...

Images from Popkalab.