Created: 04/26/2008
Video description: At San Francisco's Exploratorium, artists and designers show off the fashion of the future. From a smoke-sensitive skirt to a vest that doubles as a video game controller, CNET News.com's Kara Tsuboi captures the fun and the oddities of sartorial tech.
2nd Skin Video Transcript
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>> Hey there I'm Kara Tsuboi, CNET news.com. Have you ever wondered what the marriage between fashion and technology would look like? I think this is it. I'm here at the Exploratorium in San Francisco for the second Skin exhibit. You know what, this isn't the wedding; this is the reception. It's gonna be one big party here.
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>> The title Second Skin sure does leave a lot open for interpretation.
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>> But the idea is for designers to find a confluence of fashion and technology and those ideas were all on display at the Museum's opening fashion show.
>> There's the DIY, the do-it-yourself movement that's really strong in the bay area. There's the green movement recycling, reuse, recalibrate how you think about any kind materials; there is wearable computing with all its new materials like soft circuitry is just unbelievable. And then the design community here.
>> Here's a good example. This dress is embedded with pix electric elements to create voltage as the wearer walks.
>> When I move this and kind of create vibration in the material, there's a little light that comes up; this is just a demonstration; see that little LED that lights up? It's just from me moving this material around.
>> My iPod ran out on a run in the middle of a run the other day. If I had been wearing something like this I could have finished the run.
>> That's the hope that eventually it will get to that kind of point.
>> Or check out this massage suit-video game controller-vest?
>> They have taken a game pad from a play station and they put it on the back of a vest so you get massaged at the same time that you get to watch kickboxing.
>> Oh, how relaxing was that?
>> These people are just beating them; the Jesus out of each other.
>> Here's another favorite of mine--a skirt that physically reacts to nearby smoke so cool.
>> There's a fire alarm hidden in this flower brooch; when it sets off it sends a signal to the LED belt that's inside here and that lights up caution yellow and it also sets off what's called nitinol wire, it's a memory shaped wire.
>> This is another crowd pleasure; this suit is called okay to touch and you sure do have to touch in order to create a noise.
>> That is so cool and kind of annoying at the same time.
>> There's some conductive thread embroidered on the sleeve, and then our bodies become part of the circuit once I touch the dread, and once we are part of the circuit touching skin to skin closes the circuit.
>> This design was similar and that the ware's [phonetic] movement set off different sounds.
>> It's a dance costume that allows a dancer to generate music and sounds through her movement, the bend sensor in my elbow, an accelerometer in my wrist, some other sensors in my legs and stuff and then that sensor data sent to my laptop via Blue Tooth and that's what generates the sound.
>> The Second Skin exhibit including all the fashions you see tonight will be on display at San Francisco's Exploratorium through September.
>> Oh yeah. I'm Kara Tsuboi, CNET news.com.
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2nd Skin
At San Francisco's Exploratorium, artists and designers show off the fashion of the future. From a smoke-sensitive skirt to a vest that doubles as a video game controller, CNET News.com's Kara Tsuboi captures the fun and the oddities of sartorial tech.
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