TECHNOSENSUAL Exhibition: The Playful Dresses

High-Tech dresses can play a game of Truth or Dare, change from opaque to transparent in response to the heartbeat, or punish the wearer for not saying the truth.

Photo credit: Viki Secrets

Hi, what happens if you let fashion designers work together with engineers and nerds?

TECHNOSENSUAL is the result of such a multidisciplinary collaboration ;) It is a nerdy and cool exhibition in quartier21/MQ, showcasing a collection of interactive high-tech dresses.

The sensual dresses with the fancy functions can change transparency, vibrate on touch and stimulate the wearer, mix cocktails, record and remix body sounds, and use smart zips as faders like on a DJ mixing desk.

Curated by Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht, the intelligent textiles use embedded processors, sensors and smart materials to interact with the wearer and the environment.

Sure, many of the designs are just for fun or a proof of concept, but who knows, some ideas may have the potential to become the next cool thing in fashion.

What is your favorite playful dress? Do you have another cool idea for a fashion tech product?

Shades Of Light

LEDs are a popular and interesting design element in tech fashion, but can also be used in interior design, as demonstrated here by Aoife Wullur. "Shades Of Light" add a new dimension to curtains, draperies, wallpapers and room dividers.

Magnetic Ink

Bogomir Doringer created this installation of "magnetic ink", a ferrofluid which acts as a "skin, flesh, or garment" and transforms itself before the eyes of the viewer.

3D Printed High Heels

Instead of going to a shop to buy shoes, you will soon be able to "print" your favorite model at home by the use of a 3D printer and an ever growing database of printable models and designs. The 3D printed High Heels by Pauline van Dongen consist of polyamide and are proved to be wearable and stable.

Body Speaker Dress

The Body Speaker Dress by Karina van Heck records the body sounds of the wearer by placing several sound capturing membranes on the skin. The intimate sounds are then relayed to a control system which enables the carrier to create a remix of their body.

Smart Zippers

These custom made zippers by Maartje Diijkstra function like fader-controllers as found on a DJ-mixer. Pretty cool interface idea :) Imagine controlling the volume of your mp3 player or other things by a zip.

Anouk Wipprecht

The curator and tech fashion designer, Anouk Wipprecht opened the exhibition. Next to her, the director of the MuseumsQuartier MQ, Christian Strasser.

The TECHNOSENSUAL exhibition is also showing some of Anouk Wipprecht's projects like the DareDroid 2.0 dress.

Did you know that Annouk Wipprecht has also created the LED effects for the Trackshittaz song "Woki mit deim Popo" (Shake Your Ass) at this year's Song Contest?

Untangle Me

The Untangle Me dress starts to shake and move if the supplied hairbrush is removed from its cradle. Designed by Django Steenbakker and Ricardo O'Nascimento.

The Untangle Me Hairbrush has on the other side a mirror.

Intimacy 2.0

The Intimacy dress, designed by Studio Roosegaarde, is made of opaque smart e-foils that become increasingly transparent on close and personal encounters with the visitor.

Recommended video
Intimacy 2.0 Dress

Transparent Male Mannequin

I did not find a description for this exhibit, but I think it is quite self-explanatory ;)

Pulsating Skinny Dress

This sexy dress, entitled "Like Living Organisms", is designed by the Local Androids designer duo, Leoni and Cor Baauw from the Netherlands, and features a breathing artificial skin garment with "pulsing veins" (air is pumped through the veins to simulate a pulse). The pulse increases when you approach and the neckpiece deflates on touch as a sign of trust (unfortunately the pump did not work to show the deflation of the neckpiece at the time of the opening).

A visitor touching the pulsating artificial skin ;)

Local Androids designer, Leoni Baauw.

The Holy Dress

Melissa Coleman and Leonie Smelt created The Holy Dress, a torturing dress, which punishes the wearer through electric shocks when a lie is told.

For the demonstration, you had to put the hand on an external interface, and by speaking in a microphone, you could get an electric shock through the hand, when the dress was thinking you were lying by analyzing vocal stress.

Truth Or Dare

One of the highlights of the opening was the live presentation of the DareDroid 2.0 dress, presented by stunning DareDroid model Lara Aimée.

The drink-dispensing dress was created by The Modern Nomads (Anouk Wipprecht, Marius Kintel and Jane Tingley), and invited the visitor to play a game of Truth or Dare.

At the opening, I was also challenged to play a game with the futuristic dress, and so I chose going for a "Dare", to avoid being asked an embarrassing question ;)

The touch screen on the PDA (or was it really a smartphone) ordered me to "stand on my hands", which was quite challenging in the crowdy and hot exhibition area.

Finally, I found a small space on a wall, where I was able to do a handstand. Having bravely mastered my challenge, I was rewarded with a drink, which the dress made by the integrated drink-mixing machine :)

Recommended video
DareDroid @ Elektra Festival 2011

DareDroid 2.0 Model Lara Aimée

The Future Of Fashion

The TECHNOSENSUAL exhibition has free admission and is open from June 15th until September 2nd 2012, daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in quartier21 @ MQ.

The next big thing we will probably see soon in tech fashion, and which I missed at the current TECHNOSENSUAL exhibition, is the integration of flexible OLED displays into an outfit. Think for example of t-shirts with a changing or animated pattern depending on the mood of the wearer, or an integrated display on the sleeve, which displays the current time, date and weather ...

How will the future of fashion look like?

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