>> Asta Roseway: Thank you so much for coming today. This is our Visiting Artist
Series hosted by Studio 99. Today I have the pleasure of presenting to you Anouk
Wipprecht. I practiced that. She is a -- I'm not going to do it again. She is a fashion technologist, and her work has become global. She's done work for Cirque du Soleil,
Black Eyed Peas, Super Bowl.
So I thought it'd be a thrill today for her to show you some of the work that she's been doing, talk about some of her processes and some of her vision for wearable technology.
So, with that, I will introduce Anouk.
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Thank you so much. Yeah, it's going to be a little bit more artistic, so I'm going to show a lot of slides and really to involve you guys, yeah, in what
I do. I always say that I'm more of a builder than a talker, so don't -- don't mind it if I go wrong at points.
So my name is Anouk Wipprecht, and I'm a dutch fashion dress designer. I merge fashion with technology and try to blur the lines between the -- sort of the human and the technical, mechanical, and engineered roles.
And I have a background in fashion design, interaction design, and engineering. I started with fashion design when I was, yeah, 14, and that -- that really got me totally settled.
And in 2006 I started with microcontrollers through Arduino. And, yeah, that's got me involved with a lot of things that I liked much more than only being busy with fabrics and the creation of normal fashion design.
What I would say is I create designs that turn transparent, that drip ink, supply you with cocktail shots or capture itself in smoke. So my dresses have microcontroller heartbeats and eat batteries for dinner.
And what I also say is they flirt and interact with you like humans do and get frustrated when you get too close in their personal space. They need attention and regular checkups to survive. And exposure to heavy rain can give them a short circuit ticket to robot dress heaven.
And I think this is capturing a lot of the things that I do, like, yeah, the things that I do are -- can be quite experimental. They need to go through a longer process sort of. It's not -- mostly it's not that you just build a dress, it's -- it needs a lot of testing and, yeah, you need to have a lot of feedback, interaction, and all that, so all that stuff.
Yeah, a car you also don't build in a short amount of time or a spaceship or a robot, and that is -- but the same with wearables. So, yeah, that's why -- why I describe more my designs like sort of a little bit human or, yeah, they're always a little bit my babies and I put them out there, I take them back, I update them and give them new codes or new hardware or all that stuff.
So I really -- I really treat them like my little creatures. What I use is a lot of microcontrollers. At the moment I use mainly the Teensy. This is a Teensy 3.0 that I use. So I'm going to give it around. That's really, really small microcontroller.

That is -- mostly still I prototype with Arduino, which you can see here, just because it's just super easy. Then I code to Teensy or I develop my own PCB boards if necessary.
So you will see some of my customized boards also along the way that I developed myself with my collaborators.
So this is a selection of, yeah, the microcontrollers that have been in my hands since 2006 and more. But that's just a little, a few.
This is what I create. What I said, it's very artistic. Most people say that I create very iconic dresses. So it's maybe not my main notion to make it from the start really wearable, it's more also the exploration of, okay, how can our future look like and the things that we have -- that might be surrounding our bodies.
I don't really have a place. I travel in between a lot of cities. So at the moment I'm a little bit more in the -- yeah, outside of the -- outside of Europe. Mostly I do my projects from Europe and they get -- yeah, they get flown in and such things.
What I do is I travel with my equipment, which is my laptop, to design, to program, to communicate; the sewing machine to create, construct, and produce; and my soldering station to construct, to compile, and to engineer.
And, yeah, from there on, mostly if I'm in cities, I get invited by a laboratory, so I work from there. I work from microspaces. I work from protospaces.
I have my own manufacturers [inaudible], for example, 3D printing. I collaborate with materials, and in every city people know how to find me or I know how to find them.
And it's sometimes a very chaotic life, but, on the other hand, I really get to know the city and I really get absorbed into a city than rather if I would work from my own office in a studio, for example, in Europe, then I don't have that intensity as working really close to your clients in the city that your client is based, for example.
So I decided this life, so I test pros and cons. But it works out. And, yeah, so how it all started is that what I already talked a little bit before, I'm a fashion designer, normal fashion designer from the start, so I use fabrics, I created my designs. But I always had feeling that these designs didn't really -- yeah, I don't know. I couldn't really find a bond to it. It sort of didn't really communicate it the way I wanted to.
So in 2006 I discovered that I actually want to combine it with another passion of me, which is robotics.
And I was thinking about this, yeah, robots have that, that I am fascinated by, and that is sort of the technology.
So I was checking out what's -- yeah, how -- and how I could combine this. So that is how I got to Arduino.
And my world opened up in 2006, and I tried to find hello world's -- how to get into microcontrollers. I found out that the guys -- one of the guys who created the Arduino,
David, was giving classes in Sweden, and he had his laboratory there. So I moved to
Sweden for one-half year to really close work together with Arduino. That was during

my study time. So I just basically packed my bags and I told my study that I needed to go there and that they should not ask questions and that it will be all fine, that I needed to research hello world because I was just totally focused on this microcontroller.
So, yeah, I started with Arduino [inaudible] family. I think you guys are familiar with that. This was David. This was part of the lab in 2006. This was me saying bye, Europe,
I need to move out.
And this is what I did like in the beginning as well, so, like, yeah, super simple tests.
And we basically just -- that was the cool thing about this part, because normally with engineering I know that things were -- we have more clean and more -- a little bit less playful, but what we did was we just got all kinds of stuff. We just got everything, battery [inaudible], like everything that you could find, and you just started to connect it to your microcontroller, which really opened up a lot of things because, yeah, it's a really playful way of exploring all these kinds of things you have around you in your world that you might be able to use and manipulate.
For example, some of the stuff that I have laying around or that I had laying around, I still don't know what it was for, but sometimes it works out, sometimes not. I went a lot to medical companies to -- yeah, to search what they have, what I might be able to use. And
I've been -- yeah, I've been just traveling around a lot.
Yeah, so from that point on I was totally fascinated by microcontrollers. And I started to set the stage at that time. So I needed to know my world and what it is sort of, so I started to map it a little bit because I was not sure, my people around me were not sure.
So I needed to make a statement at a time.
So this is a little bit the graphic that I mostly show people, say like, okay, yeah, it's a dress and you put some lights in there, but this -- it's, yeah, it's not about that, it's a lot of things. It's interaction design, human factors, ergonomics. So, yeah, human-computer interaction, robotics, information architecture, computer science, industrial design.
Yeah, all the things that you guys are probably super, super good in and someone that's going to explain it, that further. But it's always good to give a little bit of insight to your clients what it is, that it's not only an add-on like this and this, it's this, it's -- yeah, a lot of development. And especially in the fashion industry people are not really used to that, so you really sometimes need to educate your client as well.
I wrote my thesis about electronics as extension of the body in 2007. And that's on -- yeah, I graduated and I went into the world with my new beliefs.
Pseudomorphs was my first project. It's very artistic project regarding to, yeah, sort of the image that I want to -- I just had this idea in my head that said that I wanted to get out of there, and that became my first project.
It was a residency for V2. That's the Institute for the Unstable Media in the Netherlands.
And, yeah, basically what it was is that I got fascinated by not only stable things like
LEDs, for example. LEDs, they work, they do their thing, and that was fine with me, but it was too -- it was too -- too stabilized. It was too controlled.

So I was thinking of ways in how I could create and develop technology or effects that would have -- that would have a more uncontrolled notion to it. For example, I'm really fascinated by things like smoke and ink. And I was just putting some drops of ink in the water and see what it does.
So it created this, yeah, sort of an organic movement that's in the water. And that is, yeah, what I directly wanted to translate to the dress. So I just basically took the drop of ink and put it in artist impression. I always shoot like a model, yeah, a model as my persona. So this was Alida [phonetic] back in the days who I had as my -- as my, yeah, main image of the girl that I wanted to create. And I mean, it's an artist's impression.
And from there on you can search how and what. So, again, I got back to my medical supplies and I search things. I found five [inaudible] that I could use. And I started to create my system, so the -- yeah, the drips, the drops of ink would go through, through it.
In constant contact with Festo, which I use their air pumps, like they're actually
[inaudible] so they're not used for water, but I use them and I found a way to, yeah, to get them to maintain them in a well manner.
I created my first boards with -- as seen in the background, at V2 Labs, which was this one. At that time all my projects were nine-volt batteries. So at the moment I use LiPos instead because they're a lot more powerful. But normally my designs run on nine-volt batteries and they run up to like three, four hours at a time. So now I have a little bit more power, so they -- mostly my designs run up to eight to 12 hours while -- yeah, while being worn.
So here you can see a lot of things. I actually did -- yeah, this was the first boards. A lot of things we don't -- we didn't need at the end. So the board could have been much smaller. For example, the heat sink was way too big. Then I would calculate this again.
That's something that you need to take in mind also. It's not only that you build this in into a casing, but it's on the body, so it's also the idea of the bodies also giving heat. So we were not sure how that would all work out. So the board was little bit bigger than it actually should be. The board was like this.
But that didn't matter because I created a back piece for that. It's all fitted in. But that was really cool to learn the first time using ink to create the boards. That was in 2009.
And I presented it during the ISEA in Germany and where it was dripping -- all the dresses get treated by a different chemical, so they all were making sort of different stains within the dress. It was really great. Was really, really, yeah, really nice project.
From there on [inaudible] for clip in which it was a little bit another effect. It was for
Britney Spears. It was with pressurized gun, so, yeah, the ink was really spitting out sort of rather than you have this more sensitive feeling of the ink going through the dress. But it was a nice experience to have the -- yeah, have both aggression of [inaudible] as the old system having the -- yeah, the [inaudible] getting the ink through the dress.
From that point on I got a call also from Bea Akerlund who also did Britney Spears' video. She's a stylist and costume designer in Los Angeles. And I got a call, and I was in
Netherlands, if I wanted to do something for a big sport event. And I didn't know what

the Super Bowl was at that time because I'm from Europe and like it's not really well mediated in Europe.
So I said like sport event, yeah, what do you want? Because that's mostly, yeah, the question like, yeah, get a call, okay, yeah, what is it exactly you want? Yeah. Sure.
Yeah. We're going to do that. When do you need it? So it's always interesting.
Later on I was Googling and I was like ah, great, that's the biggest sport event in
America. Yay. So, yeah, that was very interesting.
They wanted me to design all of them, but I said like, yeah, because it's -- yeah, it's pretty big project and I only had a month to develop it, I said like I would like to only for now I rather go for quality and I would only choose one person. And I was specialized in girls, so I took the singer, which is the girl here, Fergie.
And I developed something for her. And three other designers they took over, yeah, each -- there were four designers. Everybody took one of the band members.
So I started to create a more sporty look because that was something that I didn't do before with wearables, so I just started to make drawings and inspired by the already existing, yeah, sportwear for American football but in a sort of girl version.
So I started to prototype. And I got a deal with Swarovski, which was very nice, to implement that, because they want a lot of shine, a lot of bling and all that stuff.
So this is the chest piece created with Tom Talmon from Disney Studios. So it was really, really fun to do with the full body casts and -- sorry. So this is how the piece looked like. So it was super bright, high-power LEDs. And it was really fun to do. The batteries are in the shoulder piece. And that is the dog. Sorry. Super, super cute dog.
She also had some shoes with optic fiber. The heel was higher. Like this is normally where your heel is, but I always like to tweak a little bit of the -- yeah, of the silhouettes.
The shoes are designed in collaboration with Rene van den Berg, so it was really cool to really make shoes from scratch. I never done that before. We had to cut them. Like we had to cut them lower because they were walking on grass at the Super Bowl. We heard that like a little bit prior, so we had to cut them down. So this is, yeah, this inner part.
We cut them down. And these are the -- these are the shoes in the end.
It's with Luminex optic fiber I use to make it sustainable. And these are the -- yeah, this effect -- this was during the fitting. So it has two high-power LEDs in there. I just mainly basically going through the -- through the optic fiber. I'm sorry for that. So that was -- this was the effect. Oh, sorry.
And my main -- yeah, my main challenge was to make it as bright as possible. And, yeah, that works out because you can really see it. Also will.i.am's suit was also infitted with LEDs [inaudible] but you can't -- yeah, you could not really see it. So that was -- yeah, mine -- my main focus to really get it really fitable. So she was really sparkly from far away.

Yeah, so it's got -- I think it was the best watched Super Bowl. It got 112 million people.
So, yeah, that was fun. I didn't -- I wouldn't have expected [inaudible] before.
So I also created another dress, a totally Luminex-based dressed, but it got damaged on the way. So this was the dress prior. But, yeah, working with Luminex, it's very fragile.
Like next time -- next time that I would use this material I would really coat it in sort of in a layer of plastic because as soon as optic fibers, if you have transportation, they move a little bit and, yeah, just your whole [inaudible] just gets totally messed up.
So I didn't know that prior. And that's the thing that you learn from like, again, it was a short amount of time for development. So next time if I would use Luminex, I would really coat it in so all your optic fibers are layered within this material.
But, nonetheless, it's a nice material. I went to Luminex to the -- to Italy, so I was really working from their fabrication place on this dress. But it didn't make it to the Super
Bowl. That was unfortunate.
Another project that I want to show is Intimacy. It's dresses that go translucent. It's created for Studio Roosegaarde, for who I was an artist in residency at that time. It's a material called PDLC foil. And here you can see it. It's in microscopic level. As soon as you put a [inaudible] on there, it switches in transparency. So it's -- yeah, it's little particles within the e-foil that is -- that you can excite.
So this is an -- this is a test that I did. What I have, if I have the material in my hands, then, yeah, I like to know what it does that's perfect, but I also like to know what it doesn't do.
So what I also do is I just get a material and I try to make these awkward shapes and just to bend it in every way possible because, yeah, when I say it's good to know what this can do, but it's better to know your limitations regarding to the materials that you use so that you don't have -- at the end you don't have unexpected surprises like, okay, great, I made this wonderful construction or I constructed this dress in a really wonderful way but it's not working because, yeah, it can bend in a certain way or it's going to behave in another -- yeah, in another way.
So you can see in the technical approach we had ends without an electric field applied.
So, yeah, basically it's in a -- it's sort of in a -- yeah, a cheese with holes in it. And as soon as you excite it, as soon as you put the [inaudible] they layer out, you can see through it.
So these are the two states of the dress. That was the first one, was the prototype. And from there on we started to think of, okay, we have this dress, how can we make it more wearable. So in 2001, I think, we took the projects again and we created the final, the material version after, yeah, all the research that we did with this. So that's the Intimacy.
Plus we did an exploration about like, yeah, sort of more the poetics that you can create with these -- yeah, with using these kinds of technology. The dress is [inaudible], so it's working on proximity and also the heartbeat. So the more -- yeah, it's a little bit emotional dress. The more excited the girl gets, the more the heartbeat is rising the more

the material is reacting on that. So it's a little bit of play of, yeah, like how intimate can you be with your -- yeah, with technology and how can you extract that a bit.
Then came in a really funny project. I was doing a residency in Vienna, and so I heard about this festival. It's a cocktail-making robot festival in Vienna. And it's really great because, yeah, I just heard about the concept and my mind started to spin. And that was with Jane Tingley and Marius Kintel, an artist and a programmer.
And we heard from this -- from the festival and we decided to make our own statements on that. So we created a robot girl. It's a cocktail-making robot dress. And, yeah, what it does is -- it started out as a little bit a funny thing, but for me it's really the exploration in how can you make -- how can you establish an intimate connection with a dress and your audience.
So it's a little bit a game. It has sensors in the neck piece. So this is the prototype. And as soon as you come close, then it start -- it notice you because it's proximity based. It gives you shot of cranberry juice, and then the system is asking you to play a game.
So she's asking you, yeah, do you want to have a drink? And of course you say yes, because she's gorgeous and you want to know how this project is working. And you need to play a game of truth or dare. And if you do, you get the alcohol. And it's not only that it's interaction of getting the drink, it's more for me the interaction that you can establish with your audience.
So we -- yeah, we started this idea like what do we need and what does the dress, yeah, need to have. So we just started with some sketches.
The prototype is really built from boxes and things that we just bought in the supermarkets, Dragon Skin, super cheap sensors and all that stuff. And basically you just first create a dress, you put it in an audience, and with that feedback you go on -- so this was the robot. This was really the mock-up, like it was a boxy situation and basically just put as much possible electronics on the body that we need and then to explore how it interacts.
And basically it's a dress. It's just built from things from the hardware, from the Home
Depot and all that stuff.
From there on, okay, you know what it does, you know what you need, and you start to make the real version. So more the detailed version. And you put all the things in there what you want to do. This was for electro festival where we presented it.
So this is the final, the grown-up version. She has some updates, like that was first time that we used 3D printing, so the whole front piece here is integrated so [inaudible] this one [inaudible] mount directly in and all that stuff.
That's very sort of -- it's -- yeah, it's not really necessarily a practical dress, but it's really a dress to really -- to be eye catching because as soon as she steps in you need to provoke the audience and you need to get, yeah, these interactions out there sort of.

So she's both walking up to people as she's just standing there and people walk to our servers as soon as she steps in, she's just having all the attention. And that's also the notion that I want to create with that.
The other thing is that, yeah, I had this idea of, okay, I can build all the electronics in the dress, but then it's less fittable sort of. If you see this dress, it's like a laid out system, sort of it's your whole -- your board and your layout, your whole system is, yeah, outside.
So in a really easy way, if you look at it, you know exactly, okay, the sensors go in here
[inaudible] back here. It has little like LEDs in the piece itself. They mount in here. The valves connect [inaudible], such so they're pushing the alcohol together. Come here, go up, go to the [inaudible].
So I wanted to create a dress that is not covered, that is really sort of outsourcing all the electronics that are onboard sort of because I think -- that's my only thing, I really love robotics and robots, but what is so sad is that all the cool stuff, all the mechanics of it and all the -- yeah, all the technology is always hidden and it's always cased in sort of.
So that was -- yeah, that was something that I want to experiment with to really, yeah, to place [inaudible] the other way. So that's the development.
A lot of testing. You go through a lot of processes, like sometimes you just take it on the street and you test it and you get back with the feedback because it's also very -- yeah, it's both data generated as the physical feedback that you need from the humans that are surrounding this project.
So this was during -- this was during an art opening where he was -- where she was presenting. Yeah. So yeah. I think I see like, yeah, I always saw fashion as a sort of interface in, yeah, how we -- how we communicate with our surroundings. And in a way
I started to create these interfaces as tools, so the interface, yeah, becomes a tool. It becomes even more a tool of communication or of interaction or, yeah, provoking certain aspects to create a dialogue or to create a narrative or a story line. So it's very playful.
I work a lot with different kind of microcontrollers. Sometimes, yeah, I get messages like, hey, look into this one or this would really suit you. And mostly -- mostly I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, I look into them and they're not really impressing me that much because, yeah, I use a lot of microcontrollers.
But last year I got to know this one. It's Sakura. And it's as big -- I have one here. It's as big as an Arduino, but it's super cute because it got developed to -- yeah, to get more girls involved in a way in technology. It's also -- it's a little bit handier than an Arduino because you can directly mount an XB on here. I think that's one of the next -- so it has a -- yeah, the cool thing is it has a micro SD card socket and you can directly mount and it can be here at the back. So I'm going to kind of show it around.
And most important it's adorable because it's pink. I really like it. The only -- yeah, the only con is little bit that it's -- it's in a Web compiler-based microcontroller, so you always need to be online. And it's also -- it's not like -- yeah, it's not like Arduino. It doesn't have that big of a community, so it's really -- it's a little bit hard to -- yeah, hard to get into. Yet the company wants to make it really -- yeah, really easy to access.

So, yeah, I try to -- I try to, yeah, to work a little bit more with this microcontroller also to create a little bit of a platform for them because I really like to support this microcontroller. It's really strong. It's -- yeah, it's based with [inaudible] it's based with
[inaudible] chips. And, yeah, it's really good one.
I did -- myself and [inaudible], I created for myself a dress that was also more a gaming situation because of the Daredroids. I also like to switch between a more serious project to a really playful project because I really like that, to explore all these interactions that can happen sort of.
So this was the dress [inaudible]. She has two controllers on the back side. So she took them off, gave them to the audience, and they played. And the person that won, according to a sort of -- it was a LEDs-based game, then these little balls flipped out.
These are file sets that we created ourself and the ball flips out as she's handing over like the little presents. So that was a little exploration that I did.
Yeah. I don't know. I really like to support like what I say. At one hand I'm always stuck with one microcontroller because I really like it. At the other hand, I also -- yeah, you also need to open up to other stuff and experiment it. So that was my exploration regarding to that.
From that point on it was more creepy projects. It was a sign of Halloween. And that
[inaudible] actually a little bit of an -- as a joke. It was not a joke. It was [inaudible] statements regarding to -- hmm. How can I say this? It was really this playful exploration.
Like me and my collaborator, we just came out of a project and we were totally done and we were like super tired, and we were sitting on the couch and we were playing a game, and the game was called Limbo. I don't know if you guys know it. And in the game there was this really big spider. And I really got fascinated not only by the game, I think they really captured the atmosphere well, but by the way that they projected this spider.
It's -- in spite of its -- it's not just, yeah, walking around, creeping around, but it's noticing this little boy.
And as soon as it noticed like you can go back and forth with this little boy, it starts to pinch the leg. But it doesn't make this movement. But it makes a little bit of twitchy feel, sort of, and then it goes back, and then it slams into this boy.
And I think that movement, that kind of behavior I think was really well documented by this game. And, yeah, that got me to think about these interfaces again as having a more in-controlled behavior, like getting back to the ink dress, for example. And that was something that I created now with maybe smoke, maybe with ink and such things, but never with mechanics. But that was also -- I think that's -- yeah, that I want to explore more.
So I always start with a narrative or an artist's impression. So here I started with more the narrative of it. So I was writing abstract, really, yeah, think of what you're trying to create.

And then we started to create this design. Actually it was just a little bit an exploration.
Like we put these mechanic legs on the shoulder plates. It's collaboration with a hardware developer, Daniel Schatzmayr. We put them on the shoulders and we just started to pull, pull the legs up and down.
And, yeah, we tried to create or we created this movement that we were so fascinated by.
And the thing that we did -- that's why I said it was a little bit a joke -- we presented it during Halloween. And we just put this out to Facebook for our friends to see. And we had this [inaudible]. Because it was Halloween, it was -- it was very -- like we got a lot of commons and it was a funny thing.
And the only problem was because we put this on Facebook, it's also, yeah, not only our friends see it, but also other people. So people thought it was existing. So we got calls from London and from [inaudible] in Vienna and from other things, like, okay, hey, we want to invite you and we want you to show this dress that you created. And by that point we didn't made it, because it was only in -- it was only in a try.
So that's got us that we had to -- yeah, that we had to build a dress in a short amount of time.
So we started to laser cut and to see how we could create this in a more mechanic approach. Here it's testing the behavior. [inaudible] so, yeah, the legs go back, forth, up, down, diagonal. And here we're really testing to create this creepy feeling here. This was really in the beginning when we just started animation. But we needed to define this kind of creepiness that we were so fascinated by in the first place.
It's based on a Teensie, which I showed around. So it's a really small one. It's connected to two server controllers which are connecting to the upper piece. So this was the artist's impression.
It got also presented in -- that was the first time when we prototyped it, it was in Prague.
It was in a robot festival. And, yeah, what we really tried to explore was like the space that we have around the body, sort of public, the social, the personal, and the intimate.
Those are a little bit the topics. It's based on proximity theory of Edward T. Hall, who defines the space on the body, and that is where I base my interactions regarding to the sensors on.
So we have the intimate space, the personal space, social space, and public space. So mostly my designs behave in the public space. They just dance around and they're just there to be adored, sort of to catch the attention. In a social space they start to notice you, so they start to -- mostly I try to, yeah, make them go into a sort of -- yeah, the state before sex sort of. It's an awareness, a state of awareness.
In the personal space, it starts to attack you. And the intimate space, for example, this dress is really trying to push you away.
This, again, you just take it out to an event and you just start to explore. The sensor -- it has sensors in the shoulder pieces and a sensor in the front. So it can also -- for example, if you're standing in front of somebody but you also have your own opinion about this

person, like it's -- this is an okay person, this is a friend [inaudible] or this is a friend, test to say it, so you can calm it down or you can, yeah, make it is go in [inaudible] position.
So, yeah, that was actually -- that was -- yeah. The first time we tried it out. So, again, you learn from that, you take it back to the lab, and you develop your final piece, which was this one. And that's the spider dress.
And then we put it online, and it got actually pretty well -- like I think the day after, we woke up and we were like what are all those e-mails? We got a lot of friends requests on
Facebook and all those things, so we just launched again on Facebook and it just got this totally viral thing and it was everywhere. So it's got that -- this coffee planner -- planet, I presented it.
>> Video playing: People really have issues with personal space, right?
>>: Right.
>>: So if you get to close, I would be wearing a dress like this. Take a look. This is a robotic spider dress.
>>: Yeah. Six robotic limbs protrude from a black dress crawling around your body.
There are six -- we know spiders have eight legs, but it's a dress, get over it.
>>: Yes. This is collaboration between fashion designer Anouk Wipprecht and software engineer Daniel Schatzmayr. It's this wearable dress that's equipped with sensors that interact with the people around you. If they get too close, those legs will come out and just push them away.
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Oh. Sorry for this. Yeah. So that was -- that was another set of explorations. Like, yeah, I think the projects that I do are -- it has -- it has very overlapping things because it's based mostly on the same system or the same notion.
And, on the other hand, I always used to -- or I always like to involve very different kinds of, yeah, mechanics and technologies that I have on hand sort of.
So my research mostly stays a little bit the same. But my execution is mostly slightly different.
There we go again. The last project is based on 3D printing, which I'm going to present.
It's a smoke dress I've been dropping since 2009. The first -- funny story. The smoke dress that I created was actually based on a CO2 and a drip system in collaboration with
Aduen Darriba during our study.
And that worked really well until the -- until we were doing a video shoot with a model in which the lights of the photo -- photo studio were capturing with the CO2. So it made a chemical reaction. Yeah, the model -- basically the model was not feeling really well.
She passed out on set. So that was really interesting. Like she didn't mind and she knew it was experimental either way.
Like that's also something. Like you can make the final dress and, sure, like it's there and it's out there, and then you have a model that maybe faints or whatever. So it's always

good to always have these steps in between, like as much steps as possible for just prototyping, put it out in an audience, getting it back, and, yeah, rediscovering and reengineering it sort of.
So we went from a CO2 drip system to like using big smoke machines and finally I ended up having, yeah, having the development over a small, yeah, wireless, yeah, fog system that I'm using.
This version of the dress is created with -- it's created with Italian architects Niccolo
Casas. So we 3D printed it, which was a really cool collaboration. Actually me and
Niccolo recording with server technology, we have never -- never met each other. We were always busy online. We were just, yeah, always busy creating this dress in 3D.
And we never met. And this was the first time that we met, while the dress was printed, all done, all equipped with technology and presented for Volkswagen. And that was the time that Niccolo flew in and we finally met each other.
And that's -- for me that really -- that was really interesting, yeah, collaboration. Because normally you always work together with somebody and never like fully online sort of.
So it's really cool to have really efficient, like really pretty projects while you're just -- yeah, while you never met each other sort of. And that's the wonderful world of technology these days. It was a really cool experiment.
So dress created with Materialise, my 3D printing partner for Volkswagen. So it's a fully printed 3D printed dress. It has the [inaudible] CPU, so that's flexible print. In the back you see the system, also the -- [inaudible] connected again.
It's again playing with the idea of, yeah, this space around the body. So as soon as you get into the intimate space of the dress, it starts to smoke. And it's a little bit based on the idea of like, yeah, for example, octopuses, they get this -- yeah, they get very territorial if you come near. And they not only, yeah, dive away, they first put out a sort of smokescreen and then they escape.
So this was with -- during prototyping [inaudible]. So it's blinking sort of and it's also smoking. And it's really this nice idea where the technology and the, yeah, smoke around it, it's like, yeah, really [inaudible] with each other.
So this is the 3D metal. Like we went through a lot, like a lot, of designs. It was like one half months of development. And, yeah, printing [inaudible] this is the TPU, so the flexible print, so you can really bend it, which is really -- yeah, which is really good both for comfort as for maintenance.
Still it's a [inaudible] dress, but that's, yeah, really what I wanted to create with it. Yeah, sort of a more boxy situation, because I needed space around the body. For example, the hips are here. But the more space that was around the body, the more the smoke could go in and could go around sort of. So it really makes more organic movement than when you have -- yeah, when it just -- when it just sprays out.
So these are some of the tests regarding to lights and lighting and smoke. So you also go through lot of tests. Especially you -- yeah, with 3D printing, you just print small things

to -- to see if it works and if it works the way you want to and how you need to engineer to perfect, to the perfect setting.
And this is the final dress. It was part of an eight-piece collection which was presented during the [inaudible]. It's the biggest car show in Europe for Volkswagen. So during 12 days there were eight interactive silhouettes, and three times a day we did a show with the smoke dress as the eye catcher at the end.
So that was really cool to explore. And it was very nice of Volkswagen to really give me this -- yeah, this whole stage. And they supplied me with so much -- yeah, basically they really gave me a carte blanche to explore.
And for a big car company, that's really -- yeah, really cool thing to do. Like I notice more and more that's the -- yeah, the bigger companies are really interested in this idea of future fashion and they don't limit you. They really want you to explore like how we can build this future sort of.
And that's a mindset that I would not have expected when I started with all of this sort of for the -- yeah, you think that bigger companies, yeah, want more security, they want to have more control. But that was like none of the point of that. So for me as an artist that gave me more -- yeah, the possibility to explore also regarding to, for example, car manufacturing techniques. I used all their [inaudible] of Volkswagen. I used, for example, 3D printing as an -- yeah, also used in car manufacturing. And that really gave me the space to explore, yeah, the notion of how it is to work with this topic.
I recently on Monday -- I finished a project, a small laser project for Cirque du Soleil.
It's for a nightclub, the Light, in Las Vegas. And they invited me. They have been following me for a long time, and now they invited me to prototype for a bigger project that's coming up.
They want me -- yeah, they want me -- to involve me in that. But first we need to, yeah, go through a series of experiments like how we can do this for me to introduce to -- yeah, working with performers, which I'm not known to, or, yeah, to get really in the mindset of Cirque du Soleil.
So I'm busy in Vegas at the moment -- or for Vegas at the moment to develop some things for their shows. So they have a bit nightclub and basically everything that I do they have huge like projection mapping stuff, projections everywhere. Their whole ceiling, their whole universe is coming down, sliding in people, like the girls -- the performers are spinning and like, yeah, some of the best DJs are playing in this club.
And I am there invited to -- yeah, to experiment with some on-body technology for a few events.
One event was New Year's Eve, last New Year's Eve. We created -- we created a show.
It was a space theme. And, yeah, for me it's really, really cool to work with their performers because yeah, for me it's really testing out my systems and work on the reliability, maintainments and all these things.
Like their performers bend in ways that normal human beings can't bend. So you have -- like you have these major issues. Like we have this girl, she just -- I don't know, she flips

over and then her whole back -- my whole system is upside down, like, hmm, okay, interesting sort of, so it's really cool for me to have that platform to work for them to -- yeah, to really, yeah, test the system sort of that's like the most ideal way.
Yeah, so every time basically in the beginning of time she was on there, like she pulled the cord or she did something to distract the setting sort of. But we finally managed.
And it's really, really cool for me to, yeah, to do because it's a lot of possibilities. And yeah, a lot of -- a lot of, yeah, user experience sort of. So that's really nice.
So that's one of the piece. That was a half moon girl who was spinning in the air. She was [inaudible] smoke, so she has my smoke system in there as well as LEDs, so lighting. She was lighting up and smoking.
And the other thing is that I developed four pieces based on high-power LEDs, which you can see here. So those are as well models and printed by Materialise and they're equipped with super, super, super bright high-power LEDs. So as the girls are walking, these pieces are wireless controls and they're bouncing with the tunes that are to be found in a club.
This is really cool. For this project I really started to look at 3D printing and light, how you can really -- how I can really shine my high-power LEDs in a really nice manner through these -- through these -- yeah, through these pieces that we're creating.
Again, it's collaboration with Niccolo Casas, also with [inaudible] for the lights. All the electronics are mostly stored because they need to be like stored really well. So I 3D print pieces. So these are some of the back pieces.
This is test, prints out [inaudible], again to test the bodice inside with the whole control units. It's wireless, connected with the same with Teensies -- Teensie and XB situation.
And this is the setting. So that's -- yeah, that's a really nice project.
So yeah. So, in a nutshell, so what I'm trying to do is investigating all the ways of using fashion and on-body technology, so physical. So I'm interested in emotional, intellectual, psychological, and sensual levels.
And sensory experience. I didn't talk that much about it, but that's one of my focuses for the future, like how can we perceive differently through on-body systems, creating a higher connectivity of the sensors through the medium of clothing, using sensors to generate and to use data from most of the body and its surroundings. And, yeah, my fascination with robotic structures on a body that utilize technology as extension of our capabilities.
So what I've been doing in the past, I've just, yeah, been mapping, but we have senses like visual senses, auditory, tactile, olfactory senses. And I always try to at least integrate like some of them in my project to always learn to not be stuck with the same kinds of technology that are working, because a lot of, yeah, things are now like, oh, we want to have your smoke dress or, oh, we want to have this and that.
But then you're just redeveloping something. That is in a way good, but I also want to just, yeah, create new -- like new -- new sensations and new experiences.

So, for example, I use always for prototyping like the simple stuff. Yeah for its musics, sounds, we have visual senses. So, yeah, we can use, yeah, a lot of things that are already on hand sort of. I'm not -- I haven't really gone deeper into the technologies.
Like mostly I have like my sparks and stuff, and that is working well for me now, so I really want to get a little bit deeper into this field. So I created my ideal wireless bio data signal capturing system, so visualization of body signals in real time.
So I'm now looking into a lot of things like, yeah, what you guys are known to, you can connect a lot of things, like brain, heart rate, pulse, muscle contraction, skin conductivity,
[inaudible] movements, temperature, pressure, and other things.
The blue things that I'm already using now at the moment, so what I use now is more the -- yeah, the person, like the -- it's more proximity based. It's you and the person instead of you and your body. So it's a little bit what I want to try to work towards.
For example, I experimented with emotive. I like emotive, but still it's for me too less intuitive because you need to train your machine in order to do something, and for me that is -- that is not the direct -- it's not pure data for me sort of.
So I would personally like to get some more grip on that. So by connecting these things,
I know, okay, so heart rate goes up, skin conductacy goes up, [inaudible] is decreasing.
So this person that I have here is scared or she's -- like she's scared or she's mad or she's happy or she's excited or such things. And I would like to get a little bit more, mmm, yeah, I think a little bit more control for that kind of research in the future. So that's a little bit what I'm working on.
And, yeah, so for me the point of it is is that I'm working towards technology that arises to [inaudible] us. And what I want to say about that is that technology combined with fashion can create new ways of communication between people, a new relationship between the interface and the body, and a new connection of the body with technology.
And for me it's this -- it's a sort of -- it's a playful exploration where the body -- yeah, where the body really becomes sort of a platform for interaction.
For example, what I have with my robot dress or the spider dress, for example, you have pieces that are just pretty, like, yeah, like other pieces that are developed, but I really want to create this narrative between people. I really want to, yeah, sort of start to play games and capturing people in the otherworldliness.
So my statement about that is the position that technology has in our society, so which I see more to please us, will get more and more intimate. And as technology crawls closer to the skin, we need to rethink and recreate the relationship that we have to our technology.
And with my designs, I try to -- I try to, yeah, curate these experiences a little bit more than -- yeah, than only making it sort of a static statements. But so yeah. That's what I do.

[applause]
>> Asta Roseway: Do you guys have any questions?
>>: I have a question. So personal space is obviously something that you're -- you're addressing through smoke and spiders and all kinds of interesting things.
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Yes.
>>: Have you thought about sort of external conditions, say, for example, I'm using this only hypothetically, but in the Pacific Northwest we have a lot of rain. So I'm just -- that personal space being reacting to the conditions around you, they don't have to be emergency conditions, but it could be external factors. Have you given thought to --
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Can you give an example?
>>: [inaudible] conceptually. Sorry?
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Can you give an example of that?
>>: Yeah, I can give you an example of that. We're really interested here in electroactive polymers. But we're really interested in this notion that there could be an external event that would impact a particular portion of your body, for example. And so maybe we're -- maybe what I'm thinking about close to the body and that personal sort of in your four-cycle diagram, not intimate, but the next circle [inaudible].
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Personal?
>>: Right.
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>>: Having something interact that would impart additional structure to your knee or to another part of your body, but taking that a step further, looking at sort of the external conditions of your environment. And I mentioned rain. But that's really not a very good example. But it could be a whole host of things. But building a shield around that two-year space that you had.
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Yeah.
>>: Have you given thought to something like that beyond the smoke and --
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Um-hmm. Yeah. I think, yeah, for me it has a lot to do, yeah, with sort of the emotional state. So that's why I always take intimate and personal sort of, because that is -- that's my platform and I know how to like because I'm equipped with that sort of, I know how to move into those spaces.
Again, are you -- like I'm still not sure like what you are referring to. You mean --

>>: I guess to boil it down, I'm interested to know if you've given thought to that two-year space around you and how we might, as opposed to sort of a smoke shield put in our wearables, devise mechanisms, whether it's a polymer surface [inaudible] something that can react to the external environment, external, instead of looking from within GSR and all of the bubbles that you had on your last slide, looking at the external events and building into your fashion a barrier or something that react.
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Yeah, yeah.
>>: Does that makes sense?
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Yeah, yeah. I can kind of better know. Yeah. But I think basically -- no, I needed to find the understanding. I haven't looked into that because when I say I'm more -- I have more now explored like the more, yeah, intimate territory sort of, but, no, but that's -- that's of my interests.
I think, yeah, as soon as it's still affecting, so it's still affecting my persona, so being sort of, then, yeah, any information regarding to that, yeah, would be interesting.
I have never -- also I have never done things with -- directly with the spaces, for example, like a space or outsides or insides that does matter. I've never done that. So it's really -- yeah, what you say, it's really the bubble sort of regarding to that.
It's also because I have never had access to the technology regarding to that because, yeah, I use microcontrollers and I use everything from within to without sort of and not from -- yeah, not the other way, what you're referring to.
And that is more-- it's not -- because it's not of my interest, it's more that I have not, yeah, taken it in consideration because I'm not equipped with the technology regarding to such things. But, yes, for sure.
>>: Thank you.
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Yeah. What's your background?
>>: Ph.D. in material science.
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Okay. Okay. See? Oh --
>>: Can you speak a little bit more about the challenges or maybe it's a conflict between making some of these technologies [inaudible] fabric and also making those wearable?
Because I -- it seems -- and I'm a big fan of this, but we've also -- [inaudible] have always faced these ideas of you integrate something in a piece of clothing, but then if you -- if you're selling the idea that this might be wearable, it starts to become kind of -- a lot of these technologies that end up kind of breaking the wearability part, because you're dealing with rigid, you know, kind of things that are not necessarily something we want to be wearing.

And there's kind of this internal conflict between all the technological bits and pieces which are kind of adapted to the fabric and the kind of thousands [inaudible] fabrics that
[inaudible] wear.
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>>: And I find it really interesting that some of the works that you've done are definitely meant to be worn, like the stuff that you did for the -- well, even the Super Bowl stuff and the stuff with the nightclub, and the stuff with -- it's kind of meant to be in use all the time. Some of the other ones are very much kind of artistic pieces that are probably the lifespan -- like you said, it lasts a day or a couple hours and it's not meant to be re --
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Yeah, it's the artistic, it's more an impression, yeah, and I try to capture a little bit more into the -- yeah. Still like these things are, like, yeah, the model is standing there, you put them on, click them in, yada yada. They can do it themselves.
Like [inaudible] is totally capable of doing this herself.
But it's not like -- that's maybe not my main focus with this. If I was supposed to create a product or something that we would wear, then, you know, I would have a totally other mindset. My mindset is making more iconic pieces that really are moving something that's inspiring and motivating people to do the same way, maybe developing through a wearable, but I maybe in the process have been less interested in -- like to create big things, you need to have a lot of technology on your body still sort of, and that's not going to disappear. It's only the mindset of people that you need to change in that matter.
Like, for example, if I go into a -- like if I want to wear a pretty dress, for example, then, yeah, also sometimes you have corsetry or whatever and you need to deal with that. And this also how this works with technology on the body.
For example, at one hand, like, for example, with the smoke dress or something, if you give it to a model, it's like, yeah, okay, I always -- I know a lot of things because I've been doing this. I know that you have maybe -- you have a weight, but you need to balance. Everything is about balance because if the model is standing there and it goes here, it's -- if you have an anchor point, it's always very comfortable for the model because she's always having -- she's always like static.
So that's one trick to really -- for example, to really -- even if you have a lot of technology on the body, to make it as comfortable as possible.
But if my model is going into a new dress and she's standing there like, okay, this is new, she's [inaudible], she gets a little bit like, wow, what's happening here, you know, this is something else than a normal dress that I wear, for example. But as soon as the smoke goes off and as soon as she's noticing that she walks forward and she can manipulate these people that are in front of her or she's interacting or she does something and she -- the smoke comes out and she feels -- and she feels gorgeous, you know, then after -- always if she -- if they put it away and they do their model work again, for example, and they come back to me like after your dress like no other dress feels the same.
So at that point they became adaptive to this technology because they know that it's spread a bigger mean, that it gives value in another sense sort of.

So it's I think a little bit preparing also the mindset for the people, what I like to play with, that, okay, you want to have this, yeah, okay, hey, you need to deal with certain aspects at this point in time to be like sensoric or to be aesthetically pleasing in a certain matter.
So that is how I like to play with that, by just throwing as much things on the body as possible to give more a statement regarding to that. But I think it's a lot of preparation.
And you have [inaudible] where everybody's developing like I do this -- these are the things that I can show. That's my artistic stuff. But I'm basically -- it's also with other companies, with NDA things and then they're always asking like, yeah, okay do you want to develop things, but I'm always, yeah, you're busy with materials, with surfaces.
And that's really nice, but that's always the material approach. So I like to -- I always like to have the in between sort of, the things that we're working on -- that I'm working on for certain labs are really interesting, but they're too new to put into the world.
But things are really arising sort of. And by putting out the smoke, for example, or like other materialized effects on the body, it gives other people to think about like, okay, this is cool and like maybe how to make it wearable or how can we start to talk about this, because also the companies that I work with, for example, the e-foil that I'm using, that was very hard in the beginning.
And they didn't know that, because they want to make it as stable as possible. Well, me and Dan [inaudible] had to come in and we want to have it flexible and wearable, and they're like nobody has ever asked us a question to make this flexible. So for this company, it's totally something new, so they start to produce flexible things while they normally their focus is on making it as stable as possible because of maintainments or whatever.
So as soon as this gap is being built, like the technology is also, yeah, moving, moving that way sort of. So it's -- yeah, a lot of preparation and, yeah, what I say, making people more adaptive that if they want a certain thing, then they need to leave another thing or maybe they're a little bit more [inaudible] focused in their movements or such things.
But, yeah, there are -- there are just -- yeah, there are tricks. Also with Cirque du Soleil, for example, yeah, I can experiment with the dancers there, but still they have a lot of electronics too.
I always start when I go to them, I just take a lot of -- I just put a weight and I just say like, okay, I put this on the body, I just strap it together and I say like, okay, this is what we need to deal with, how can we -- how can we do this. And then she starts to bend and we start to work with that.
So you're preparing your person, like the person that you have in front of you, by this use and like is this working out or not. And if it's working out, then you start to develop.
And mostly it's much smaller. So like there are -- like there are a lot of tricks regarding to, yeah -- to do doing that.

Yeah, what I say, my focus is not really at this point of making it wearable because I'm too much exploring this whole field. So probably within ten year dust all settles and all that stuff. But that's not my -- my main focus is to create the best quality effects around the body that can possibly be and the best interactions regarding to that.
So as soon as I have that under control -- for example, what I said, like smoke dress, started out with a big piece sort of and that every year it gets smaller because I take back to my lab and I work on it sort of.
So it's always these things, yeah, it needs development. Because at one hand you say like okay, yeah, but the system is big, at the other hand it's like, yeah, okay, but otherwise your effect is small. You know, so it's always the -- yeah, the in between sort of. And yeah. Does that -- does that answer your question a bit?
>>: Yeah, yeah, it does. In a way I just wanted to hear your thoughts on this challenge, because I think, you're right, for the effects, for the exploration and for opening people's mind, you want the effect to be as visible as possible. You want it to be big. It's not necessarily wearable -- or it's wearable by a certain person who's going to be trained to wear it, but other than that, I think that's -- that's definitely -- it's really interesting. But the -- there is still a challenge of adapting any of these things for any longer term.
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Yeah.
>>: And I think it's interesting to see how much of that and how close are we to see that transition. I mean, it would be interesting to talk to you about like has anybody ever worn this [inaudible] design on a longer time scale.
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Um-hmm.
>>: So like has there been something that people have repeatedly worn.
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Yeah. And it was cool, like, for example, Volkswagen,
Volkswagen show was 12 days long, three shows a day. So then you're really -- and also
Cirque du Soleil, that's a show that is every -- so you have a maintainment. Sometimes wires pull and things break, but that's mostly it sort of. So but yeah.
>> Asta Roseway: Any other questions? I [inaudible] for the online audience. I want to just thank everyone for coming. Thanks, everyone, for coming. We're going to continue discussions offline. But thanks again and give a big hand to Anouk.
[applause]
>> Anouk Wipprecht: Thank you.