Philips Design

“Philips Design” has prototyped garments that incorporate electronics into fabrics and clothes under project SKIN which examines the future integration of sensitive materials. Developed by Philips Research Technologies, the light-emitting-diode (LED) is a semiconductor diode that emits light when an electric current is applied. In the 1990s, Philips design deepened an ongoing research project emerging trends and social shifts in the area of emotional sensing. The “Bubelle Dress” is an exploration into the emotive technology and the ways in which the body and the surrounding environment can use pattern and color change to interact and predict the expressive state. When “Bubelle” has been introduced to the world in September 2006, it got the top spot in “Inventions Of the Year” list from Time magazine in the category Fashion.

Emotion and personality

With this promising project, Philips Design’s "Bubelle Dress" demonstrates how electronics can be integrated into clothing to express the emotions and personality of the wearer. Surrounded by a delicate 'bubble' construction, the wearer can see the reflection of his internal feelings traduced in the illumination and color change of patterns exposed on the dress. "Bubelle" is therefore designed to respond to an individual's body and create a visual representation of emotions rather than just being 'on' or 'off'. For instance, the dress behaves differently depending on who is wearing it, and therefore exhibits a completely nonlinear behavior.

Emotive technology

Each emotion you might experience, such as stress, fear or arousal will affect the body's temperature and consequently, the sweat levels that generate the light which changes the pattern and color of the garment. One could program the material so it turned red for anger or stress, or green when calm. Using biometric sensing technology, the temperature receptors in the skin not only register whether the areas are cold or hot, but the intensity.

Relation to space and environment

The Philips Design project explores the space between the body and the near environment conceiving dresses that blush and shiver. It looks to emotional and physiological sensing, as a way of exploring new indirect ways of communicating in contemporary relationships.

Go see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRX-3DDBow0