V2_ Knowledgebase

by-wire.net loves to expand innovative fashion by sharing knowledge. It will continue researching and collaboration projects. As freelance intermediary Marina Toeters works for fashion and technical companies; creates concepts, presentations, brainstorm sessions and garments for example for technical companies which are looking for new application for their materials or advises designers interested in process innovation.

By the use of electric leading material, light, heath and sensor based circuits of information it is possible to make costumes or scenography an active player in the theatre space. CC is based on the use of Electroluminescent wires and films cut into variable shapes . Those EL materials are either embedded into fabric like organza and felt ormerged into a translucid membrane.

Exercices de Style is a Montreal-based fashion design lab.

Intimacy, developed by Studio Roosegaarde and V2_Lab, is a project that straddles the world of fashion, wearables and the electronic arts, while exploring the relation between technology and intimacy in contemporary tech-society. The project consists of high-tech garments made with wireless, interactive technologies and smart foils, which can become transparent.

Designer Mariëlle Leenders has experimented with fabric that features shape memory wire either woven into the material or added later as one or more lines of stitching. Her Moving Textiles (2000) react to differences in temperature by shrinking, creasing, changing structure or rolling up. Lines of stitching added to the basic material in certain places cause the fabric to creep up when temperatures rise.

News Knitter is a data visualization project which focuses on knitted garments as an alternative medium to visualize large scale data. The production of knitted garments is a highly complex process which involves computer support at various steps starting with the designs of both the fabric and the shape of garments until they are ready-to-wear. In recent years, technical innovations in machine knitting have especially focused on the patterning facilities. The patterns are designed by individuals generally depending on the current trends of fashion and the intended target markets and multiplied through mass production. News Knitter translates this individual design process into a world-wide collaboration by utilizing live data streams as a base for pattern generation. Due to the dynamic nature of live data streams, the system generates patterns with unpredictable visuality.

Every object has a skin. Thick or thin, smooth or rough, porous or impermeable, the skin is the line between the hidden inside and the outside we experience. Skin: Surface, Substance, and Design presents products, furniture, fashion, architecture, and media that are expanding the limits of what we understand as surface. Reflecting the convergence of natural and artificial life, this provocative and stimulating book shows how enhanced and simulated skins appear everywhere in our contemporary world. Designers today manipulate the relationship between the inside and outside of objects, garments, and buildings, creating skins that both reveal and conceal, skins that have depth and complexity as well as their own behaviors and identities.

Since the label was born in 1982, the aim of Stone Island has been to design innovative top line collections in the sportswear panorama, with a high concern in function and use of the garments. Stone Island has undertaken innovative research into fibres and textiles never previously used in the clothing industry. The production procedures are often adapted from completely different industrial sectors and when applied to clothing, instead of standardizing production they produce unrepeatable garments.

Unravel: the SIGGRAPH2006 Fashion Show presents a runway show of innovative and experimental works in computational and conceptual couture, fashion with a social agenda, science-inspired form, and new technologies of material fabrication. Unravel brings together the work of designers and artists from the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia who are seeking to redefine the notion of ‘wearable.’ In the increasingly mobile nature of contemporary life, it has become important to contemplate how the devices we carry and the garments we wear converge into a ‘secondary skin’ which function as an extension of ourselves, in both ability and perception. By using fashion, a medium which has always been associated with self-expression and personal identity, these designers seek to demonstrate how the use (or misuse) of technology and its modes of production have the power to stimulate, delight, and inspire in ways as yet untapped in the fashion world. Gone are the stereotypical bulky cyborg devices; what emerged are garments of beauty, subtlety and elegance in form. Some bring to light important social issues — redefining our notions of personal space, networked environments, and issues of privacy and protection. Others relish in pure delight, reminding us how technology also has the power to enhance our personal relationships and celebrate fantasy and play as part of the human condition.

-Wifi jacket: While I was orignally working with basic light stripes, I ultimately decided to integrate them with a flower motif. This design choice was made to recount the age old story of borrowing from the environment to decorate garments - think floral and animal print patterns. Since Wi-Fi is so prevalent in the environment now, I thought it would be interesting to integrate this representation of a man-made part of our environment into a garment in that same way. In the end design, flowers referencing our natural environment are juxtaposed with technology from the synthetic environment. -'Intimate Controllers' is a platform where video games are played by couples touching each other. The platform consists of two controllers, a bra for the female player and boxer shorts for the male player. Each controller is embedded with 6 sensors placed with varying degrees of intimacy in relation to the body part with which they correspond. Players must pass game levels together and in doing so, game play results in increasingly intimate positioning. The goal of this project was to research and create objects that challenge the traditional notions and orientation of video game play.

The World of Wearable Art Awards Show is a series of six spectacular shows combining choreography, sound and light as a backdrop to the display of amazing garments. An international line-up of top artists and designers put their creations on show in this iconic event, introducing the latest in imaginative couture and accessories. Extraordinary lighting and special effects heighten the sense of drama in each of the two-hour shows. These theatrical experiences attract up-and-coming designers, celebrities, hosts of the fashion-conscious, and others wishing to witness the cutting edge of the wearable art scene.