After making their intricate designs for 3D printed items customizable, the designers of Nervous System have introduced yet another evolutionary leap in 3d printing products for end use. In the 'Kinematics' project, they have created several designs for products such as bracelets, necklaces and even a dress that consist of triangular elements. These elements can be customized according to the customer's liking, and based on a 3D scan of the customer's body. The way the dress will drape over the body can be simulated and previewed. The most innovative aspect of this project is that after customization, the 3d models of the products will intelligently be folded so as to minimize the space it takes within the printable volume. So essentially a dress will be printed like a crumpled plastic ball, but when unfolded it turns into the complete dress. It's impressive, but now some fashion designers need to step in to make this stuff really wearable.
Protocells might be the first step towards products that behave just like other biological organisms. These are primitive cells that can be created in a lab and contain chemicals that react to environmental stimuli. Designer/researcher Shamees Aden collaborated with Martin Hanczyc to give rise to a sneaker made of such protocells.
The sneakers are grown in a lab, where different cells can intelligently be grown in different places for different material properties and behaviors. For instance, the sneaker contains cells that expand or contract based on the pressure on the sole, thus adjusting its shape dynamically while in use. Another unique aspect is that since such products are made of cell colonies and the cells will die over time, new cells with new properties can be added by submerging them in a special liquid containing the new protocells. Since such products can be self-healing and be given new colors, they may dramatically alter the way we shop for, maintain, and store our clothing.
Neri Oxman, professor at the MIT Media Lab, has recently gone on a 3D printing spree and created a beautiful collection of objects that represent the state of the art of this additive manufacturing process. More than that, it is an interesting conceptual probe into a future where we can interweave these sorts of objects more and more with our own bodies, as 3D printing allows a sophistication in design approaching that found in nature. Professor Oxman has shown that now we can produce objects of unlimited geometrical complexity, consisting of different materials that can smoothly transition in terms of properties such as hardness, thickness, or color.
Now the first 3D printers that are interesting to the mainstream consumer have emerged on the market, we will need to see how this democratization of design will turn out. Are we entering a future where everyone will become a designer through trial and error, and even more throw-away objects are produced with these technologies than happened after the plastics revolution, or will people learn faster this time and be more careful in what they create? With this creative power comes responsibility, of course, and it might be that because people are so closely involved in the making process that it helps them taking on this responsibility, just like, say, you take responsibility for the quality of the turkey you make for Thanksgiving; it has to be exquisite. Same goes for creating objects with our 3D printers - let's all take Neri Oxman's work as a good example of the objects to come.
Eight objects of the collection, called "Imaginary Beings," have been included in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou, so it might be worth paying a visit during your next trip to Paris. Also, here is a video that shows you the objects in more detail:
Also check out her personal website, where you can see some other interesting projects she has been involved in, some of them venturing more away from raw art and towards contextualized, embodied product design. A beautiful example is the Carpal Skin glove, that can be made uniquely according to the physiological requirements of each user.
Bacteria + green tea + sugar solution = a brand new garment out of bacterial cellulose.
That's the idea of London-based researcher Suzanne Lee. Where the material may not be very comfortable to wear, it has a very unique aesthetic to it, so with further optimization this might go somewhere. Whether this can become their original vision of a "garment emerging from a vat of liquid, having been completely shaped by micro-organisms" is the question, but nothing is impossible of course.
I knew they had the idea going for a while already, but finally they've released some work. Fashion designer Nancy Tilbury, in collaboration with Philips Design, have created a movie about the future of fashion for 2050. I love how they present their work about the cyborgization of the human body almost as a new religion of aesthetics. Their ideas include - I hope I get this right - :
- Fashion becomes an atmospherical experience, as if your skin becomes part of your natural environment. Think gaseous and liquid rather than solid.
- Fashion will become digital, but not in a push button type of way. Technology around the body becomes organically sensitive, speaking to our visceral rather than our social or our reflective minds. This is possible through the ethereal qualities that nanotechnology will allow us to develop. Think interacting by sensually touching your skin, or swallowing certain tokens.
- Digital cosmetics will be big business. Think on-the-fly modifiable irises and fingernails.
- We will be able to influence the 'natural' growth of our human body. Think growing your own shoes, jewelry and even your garments directly onto your body.
Iris van Herpen is a Dutch fashion designer with very unconventional sources of inspiration that give her work an interesting strangeness and aesthetic depth. One of her latest collections was inspired by mummification, with the underlying idea that "life is an illusion, and in death you could create your own reality". By not just following the form of the human body, but rather augmenting it with grotesque sculptural structures, Iris also gives us a look into a world where humans are more culturally free to explore their physicality and modify it to their own wishes.
Kerry Jia Yi Lin has created a great wearable electronics prototype with her dress that shows the "emotional and non-emotional stress of the wearer". Not being entirely sure about what that means, this design just speaks for itself. Like all great design does.
This dress is such a splendid example of how wearable electronics can take human embodiment further, and even how it can change our entire lives and mindsets. This kind of directly interactive systems that function on the background of awareness and alter our embodiment can change the whole way in which we interact with the world, how we feel about it and how we reflect on things. They take us back to a mindset where we are fully connected to the things around us, where we come to intuitively come to understand that every of our actions, even every of our thoughts, is as relevant as any other, and has a continuous effect on our world. They rephysicalize us as a kind of hybrid animals in an artificial lifeworld, that will be richer and more beautiful that anyone could have ever dreamt of. This dress truly is a new organ of our body, and that I think is a beautiful idea to keep in mind while developing products.
I hope that Jia Yi will make another movie of her work, one that just shows the dress being worn in relevant contexts, without any further explanation. Show us what the dress can do, and moreover, emphasize its aesthetics of movement. Let it be of highly professional quality, ready to go into the media, and simply let it sell the dress, nothing else. 30 Seconds is enough for an impactful little clip. I will post it here too, of course.
I am promoting the work of Eunsuk Hur, who creates incredibly intricate fabric structures that truly speak for themselves and exude an aesthetic sensitivity that we should all look for in our process of creation. Imagine the beauty that can result when this gets combined with less crude materials and manufacturing processes. She also seems to adhere to the vision that morphing textile structures can support ever more nomadic lives in which people become more embodied with and less dependent on technological environments. This is definitely a designer to keep an eye on if you ask me.
The idea of networked physicality is brilliant to me and should in my view soon be adopted and made widespread in some way by a large corporations. It will connect us more holistically and draw us away more from seeing ourselves as mostly mental beings, communicating through words that stem from disembodied thoughts.
An early example of technology that physically connects us is devised by Jessica Floeh. Her 'exChange' system lets two people wear each other's breath in a very intimately coupled way. Stretch sensors in a belt measure one's chest circumference, and directly connect this data to the size of an expandable object worn on the belt of another person. This way, you are directly connected to the breath of another person.
Such intimate technological connections can become of profound meaning, and not only connect but also guide us on an implicit level. Studies have shown that subtle cues and dynamics in our environment can directly influence our own behavior. For example, we start to move more slowly if we are exposed to things we relate to 'oldness'. I am convinced that the more we connect ourselves physically to other living beings - either organic or technological -, we will more and more start to guide and follow each other, and this will in the end result more and more quickly to our activities being optimized through these instant and broad communication loops. We will find our own silence amidst all this data if only we explore in an experiential and embodied way, and stay aware of what works for us.
Breath to me is an excellent starting point, because it is very easy to ignore and overlook in our often turbulent daily lives. But breath is the fundament of all life, connected to every of your actions. The quality of your breath is the quality of your life, you might say. Breath is even equated with the concept of soul by Christians, given to us on birth by God. Breath can be said to be divine inspiration, and the basis for all true creativity. By controlling one's breath, making it calm, deep and slow, we learn to come in tune with our own body and through that with the whole that intends to be creative through our own body. I think it is not a view too grand to feel that a true awakening can be catalyzed by innovations like these, if they are developed further and spread amongst people.
Wearable products have a crucial role here in that they can bridge the gap of socio-cultural acceptance, because they allow for intimate connections without being obtrusive. On the other hand, more conventional plastic-encased electronic products have the advantage of being cheap, small, and multifunctional. So these industries need to come together, their knowledge needs to fuse and make for emergent technologies that can make these innovations happen. And meanwhile, people need to become more open to products that revolve more and more around quality of interaction and unitasking instead of mindless multitasking and abstract interactions. People need to learn to be happy with little, and able to leave technologies at home, seeing when it is the right time to connect to certain technologies and at the same time disconnect from other technological connections. This will be a slow process, but I definitely see this occuring more and more, and an exciting future awaits us.
Nearing is the time for the Dutch Design Week 2009, that will take place from October 17th until the 25th in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. I would recommend you to, next to the Design Academy, take a look at the graduation projects of Eindhoven University of Technology. This young school is quickly maturing and producing interesting interactive concepts for future products. You can even try out some prototypes for a personal experience.
My own project, Flowtime, an electronic vest for yoga practice, will also be featured in this exhibition, and the prototype is available for all to see.
So mark your agendas: October 17-25, ID'09, main building at the Eindhoven University of Technology.
This blog reports and reflects on intellectual and technological developments that can give rise to a liberated feeling of oneness with the whole of being, and an awakening of creative intelligence that empowers people to feel and act as inextricably linked with their lifeworld.
Special attention in this blog is paid to embodied intelligence, complex emergent behavior, applied behavioral economics, technology for physical behavior modification, and the merging of digital and physical experiences.
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The author
Ralph Zoontjens is a product designer from Tilburg, the Netherlands. He has graduated with a Master's Degree from the Industrial Design program at the Eindhoven University of Technology with an interactive jacket that gives feedback for yoga practitioners. He has worked for the Philips Design Probes group and currently does product design for Motio Development in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. In his spare time he pursues his many interests, does yoga and distance-running, and tries to immerse himself into creative processes as much as possible.
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