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This week Kris Abel introduces What She Said’s Christine Bentley, Sharon Caddy, and Kate Wheeler to…
As part of her graduate thesis, NYU student Xuedi Chen has designed a dress made of a material that will slowly become transparent as you share more and more information about yourself online accidentally.
She’s named the dress x.pose and it’s connected to an app in her phone which monitors how much information she is unknowingly revealing about herself as she uses her phone.
A wireless signal to the dress activates 20 special mesh panels in the dress, triggering them to shift from opaque to transparent.
The idea is to make a statement about just how naked we’ve become in the digital world.
“The panels are made of smart film, or electrochromic film” she says, “It’s used most commonly for privacy glass. “The film is opaque when off, and running a specific amount of electricity through it ‘switches’ it to transparent in microseconds.”
She’s designed couture for Fergie of the Black-Eyed Peas, turned heads on the runways of Vienna, and made an appearance during the Superbowl.
Designer Anouk Wipprecht creates dresses using tech wizardry including robotics and artificial intelligence. Her Spider Dress has autonomous wing/arms, her Smoke Dress reacts to intimacy by creating a smoke veil when someone approaches, and her new Faraday Dress (which she showed in San Fran two weeks ago) allows her to accept half-a-million volt electrical shocks (safely) that can then be used to “sing” music.
