Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht has created a dress that moves and changes color according to your brainwaves.
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The 3D-printed dress is connected to the wearer’s brain using 1,204 electroencephalography (EEG) sensors embedded on a cap. The sensors resemble the scales of a pangolin; hence it’s called the pangolin dress. The dress will move and light up depending on the brainwaves it receives, translating it into motion and light patterns in real-time. “Feeling calm? The garment lights up a slow, soothing purple. Stressed out? The lights flicker, and little motor-driven components jutting out from the futuristic frock like animatronic wings flap more frantically,” reports CNet.
“As each of the BCI [brain computer interfaces] inputs is connected to each one of the actuators, this gives a very individual animation of the dress,” Wipprecht said.
Known for creating future-forward fashion, Wipprecht has built everything from dresses that poke spidery arms at unwanted advances to clothing that turns transparent when its wearer is aroused. A unifying theme of her work is that she often uses clothing to signal unconscious intent, according to Fast Company.
“The dress is printed out of nine parts. Together with a collaborator on this project and 3D specialist Igor Knezevic from Los Angeles, we have been working on the dress and little connector parts,” explains Wipprecht.
The mind-reading dress will walk the runway during the annual Ars Electronica festival for arts, technology and society in Linz, Austria, this week. Due to COVID-19 safety precautions, this year’s event will take place simultaneously at 120 locations around the world. You can also watch the event online.
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The Institute for Integrated Circuits at Johannes Kepler University Linz and neurotechnology company G.tec developed the BCI, and Wipprecht fashioned the dress from a durable yet lightweight nylon material.
