openMaterials

This mitten lights up when its wearer shakes hands with someone. It has two exposed soft contacts around the thumb and across the palm which, when bridged by bare skin, turn on the LED embedded on the flower. The mitten itself was created by fashion designer Isabel Tomás, and we then sewed a simple touch [...]

Diana Eng’s beautiful Fairytale Fashion Show @ Eyebeam. Check out fairytalefashion.org for more info.

bionic yarn is a ‘new fabric made of recycled plastic bottles’ (PET). I’m loving the great ‘process’ section on the website, explaining the extrusion process and how the fibers are spun together to make the yarn.

This Sunday altlab is holding its first Soft Circuits Open Lab at the School of Fine Arts in Lisbon (FBAUL - Faculdade de Belas Artes de Lisboa). There is no predefined structure for the event. We will meet for the course of one day with the purposes of sharing knowledge, experimenting freely, advancing on-going projects, [...]

More interesting news from Stanford University’s research on carbon nanotubes, via a Printed Electronics World article: Ordinary textiles could be transformed into batteries that hold up to three times more energy than a mobile phone battery, by simply dipping them into nanoparticle-infused ink. Conventional batteries are made by coating metallic foil in a particle slurry and [...]

Pa++tern, created by Daito Manabe + Motoi Ishibashi, is a combination of an installation and an esoteric programming language for embroidery in which a series of industrial sewing machines are controlled by twiterers. Here’s the process: using a simple environment, users create a short program for an embroidery pattern and send it over to the [...]