Author: Zahira Diefenbach

 

 

Brainstorming

The intent of this course was to create a wearable garment that included technology. Not knowing where to start, I began brainstorming topics and feelings that are personal to me… and quickly I realised I wanted to do something that had to do with the negative impact of humans towards the earth.

After deciding the direction my theme should go I still wasn´t sure about what exactly I wanted to raise awareness with my dress so I created a moodboard to help. It was than when I found the great photographs of Yann Arthus-Bertrand from Earth from above. When I first saw the pictures I was impressed how beautiful earth is. But after contemplating the
Kilimanjaro picture I realised that what I was considering a beautiful photography taken from the air was not supposed to be. The image of this high mountain without snow is not natural.  I started to take a closer look to the other photographys and came to the conclusion that humans are becoming ignorant towards pollution and their negative impact towards earth.

 

 

 

Design

Since the beginning it was important for me, that the design should have a majestic appearance, kind of a queen of the earth. I wondered if I should do a big had piece as a crown and an elegant cape. My main inspiration was the picture of the Kilimanjaro, so I wanted to have rought striking forms but also something elegant.

 

 

 

The design ended up beeing out of two separated pieces. One dress that raises awareness of the rought hurted earth by the humans and a cape that symbolizes the ignorance about humans destroying earth and the beauty they see in it.

The most striking material I am using on the dress is wood. The wood pieces are laser cut and had no
treatment as a symbol for a dry nature also emphasized by the edgy forms giving painful and aggressive look.

Around the dress I placed LEDs and wires. It was important for me to show all electronic complements as they represent the human actions towards nature. The wires create a shape of veins and have a bleeding effect. The LED‘s are activated through a sensor showing green lights when the human is conscious with his actions towards earth and red when he acts hectic and irresponsible. Just focused on his own goals and needs and ignores every effect he has on the environment…

 

Prototype

I invested a lot of time doing prototypes and finding the right shapes. As you will I wasn´t sure at the beginning how the inner layer should look like and tried different things out.

The following pictures are organized chronologically and should sow you my worklow.

 

 

 

 

Electronics

About the electronics, at first I wanted to have a lot of LED´s at the bottom of the cape. Every time the model would move the LED´s would shine. I tried to imitate it withe the prototype cape and realized that the LED´s would add to much weight to it and would not swing as I wanted. This conclusion led me to the idea of  putting the LED´s at the dress and make them blink as a heart beat. Furthermore I liked the way the wires looked in combination with my other materials. I also placed an accelerometer at the right wristband to control the color and the speed of the blinking. The faster the model moves, the faster the heartbeat beats and it turns from green in to red.

Since we didn´t had any previous knowledge about programming or electronics we got some help from other students from NTU. With out their help I would not had been able to do it in time. They explained me which LED´s would be the best for me, how i should conect them, how everythink is conected to the lilipad and the program on it.

 

 

Final garment

After a lot of hours of work I am really thankful for the awesome help from our professor Galina. She encouraged me to not give up and stay until late to finish what I had proposed my self earlier. Galina advised me very good and invested a lot of time and energy on us. Thanks to her I ended with this succesful garment.

Everything worked out as I wanted, besides the accelerometer that measured the movement. Since this electronics are very fragile I couln´t write a program that measured exactly the movement. So every time you put on the dress you will have to find the right spot and angle where to place the sensor.