Computers as Couture 

by Rebecca Sykes, IDG News Service 
October 17, 1997 

High technology held hands with high fashion this week on a stage at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. 

The unlikely pair were united in wearable computers that emerged from a
collaboration between Media Lab graduate students and fashion-design students
from schools around the world, including Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo,
Domus in Milan, Parsons School of Design in New York, and Creapole in Paris.
The clothing designs and the technology encompassed within their folds ranged
from the fantastic and not yet functional, such as a suit that changes
colors, to the working and conceivably useful, such as a solar-powered
cellular phone concealed in a hat.  

Some of the operational designs include a backpack, hat, and necklace that
work in concert to let American Sign Language users communicate with people
who don't know ASL. One of the spires on the outfit's court jester-like hat
houses a tiny camera that points down at the wearer's hands. A CPU in the
backpack translates 40 signed words into speech, which is emitted from
speakers also located in the backpack, according to Nuria Oliver, a Media Lab
student involved in its design. Also in the works is a necklace that visually
displays the spoken words so that deaf people who do not know ASL can
communicate with the ASL user, she said. 

Other wearable computers were designed to gather information about the
wearer's mood, or affect. 

"Wearables are uniquely positioned to gather affect information about us,"
said Rosalind Picard, a professor of computers and communications at MIT
whose research includes computers and affect.  

Belying the notion that using computers depersonalizes humans and their
interactions, Picard demonstrated that wearable computers can actually add a
personal touch to impersonal situations. For example, a teacher standing
before a video camera beaming a signal to distance learners or standing in
front of an auditorium filled with students is cut off from students' facial
expressions, which sometimes signal when the teacher needs to repeat a
certain point. Picard and her students have developed eyeglasses that sense
when its wearer's eyebrows furrow, a common indication of confusion. The
glasses are electronically linked to the teacher's computer screen, where a
thermometer-like graphic rises and falls in response to students' eyebrow
movements. 

Other affect-monitoring wearables in the works include an earring that
measures the wearer's pulse and a visor attached to a CPU that measures body
movements related to heightened interest, according to Picard.  

Though no fashions on view showed it, perhaps the most extensive use of
computers to gather data from human bodies will be medical, according to
Kazuhiko Nishi, president of ASCII Corp., a Media Lab sponsor. "This is going
to be a huge market in the years to come," Nishi said. 

For example, heart patients could wear a computer that monitors blood
pressure and heart rate and could tell them when they needed to move or
exercise less strenuously, Nishi said.  

Back on the runway, some outfits were targeted at specific industries,
including a not yet fully functional outfit known as the Omni Chef. With a
CPU encased in plastic and strapped onto the chest of a chef's white suit, an
Omni Chef wearer could run a busy commercial kitchen while being out in the
dining room. The outfit includes an armpiece microphone through which Omni
Chef communicates with individual chefs in the kitchen, who wear tiny
earpieces. Omni Chef is also equipped with goggles linked to a video camera
in the kitchen, providing visual confirmation of Omni Chef's orders.  

While Omni Chef will linger on the drawing board a bit longer, three or four
graduate students wore fully functional musical jean jackets. Levi Strauss &
Co. donated the jackets, on which a keypad was embroidered with conductive
thread. Tacked behind the keypad was a thin computer circuit board that
played notes depending on which keypad threads were touched.  

Rehmi Post, a Media Lab student who sported one of the jackets, said that
future jackets may be stitched with practical devices such as a cellular
phone. "You'd never have to pull out your cellular phone," Post said. 

http://www.media.mit.edu