Dutch designer Borre Akkersdijk has been working on the concept of creating modular high-tech clothing. The Wi-Fi-connected onesie he developed for the SXSW music festival last year has been upgraded into a platform that changes functionality based on location.
The most transformative technology of the past few decades has been the development of modular platforms. We went from cell phones to flip phones to pocket-sized computers. They are the Lego toys of multimedia, capable of running a variety of applications, acting as hubs for hardware peripherals, and interacting wirelessly with other objects.
Borre Akkersdijk is working hard to achieve multimedia development in the field of clothing. Over the past few years, he has developed several conceptual pieces of hardware that reshape clothes into input devices, Wi-Fi routers, and air purifiers. He uses local materials and transforms the technical functions of this “clothing” to solve local problems.
Akkersdijk considers himself a textile designer and studied at the Eindhoven Design Academy in the Netherlands and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. After graduating, he began experimenting with different textile technologies, and a few years later he was asked to help solve common problems with the first generation of truly wearable technology.
Akkersdijk explained: “Eindhoven University of Technology was developing a large-scale smart textile project called CRISP?, but they got stuck on the same problem every time. They just applied the technology to the textile industry, like a sandwich. Technology and textiles don’t mesh well with each other. They’re struggling to find breakthroughs and substrates where sensor technology can be embedded.”
The circular knitting machine was originally used to knit mattresses, and Akkersdijk used this knitting machine to weave very thick items. This was his main approach to the weaving technique: it was just the right thickness to inlay, protect large sensors, and put wires into clothing, it was just perfect.
Eindhoven University of Technology simply wanted to use Akkersdijk’s thick braid to embed sensors and run circuits in a way that would look completely invisible from the outside. “They split the braid crosswise down the middle and embedded the bulky sensor technology in it,” explains Akkersdijk. “You can’t feel it at all because it’s more like a synthetic material.” Despite Akkersdijk’s interest, He also didn’t expect that this method could completely solve the problem.
He said: “I do like the idea, but if it is to be implemented as a solution, further research is needed. I will have to examine the conductive yarn and sensor technology in depth and figure out how the university researchers plan to embed them. So the first step in the production process is to weave in the conductive yarn.”
However, the object that first sparked Akkersdijk’s idea for a wearable hardware module was not wearable at all. In 2013, Akkersdijk and Eindhoven University of Technology jointly developed a pillow that can help dementia patients communicate with their families. By embedding a built-in vibration motor into the thick padding, the person holding the pillow on the other side can sense the patient’s gestures.
Akkersdijk said: “Patients can’t talk, they can only sit, but they consciously want to touch and move, it’s like returning to the feelings of children… We want to develop a special pillow that patients can feel through feeling. , they can put it on their lap and the lap of their loved ones, and when one party touches the pillow, the other party can also really feel its vibration. This realizes a new way of communication. You can feel what the other party is doing. , as if you could touch his hand.”
In 2014, this pillow aroused the interest of the organizers of the SXSW music festival, and they hoped that Akkersdijk could bring it to the exhibition for demonstration. The Dutch government launched a project: Jan Kennis, the Dutch cultural attaché in the United States, had the unique job of finding Dutch creative experts who were seeking an American audience.
Kennis currently lives in Brooklyn and is fulfilling a four-year contract. “Our network can understand what’s going on, who wants to do something, who might be interested in promoting Dutch art,” he says. “It could be museums, it could be pop music, it could be anything else. That’s my job. It would be great to find relevant American institutions, introduce them to Dutch art, arouse their interest, and get them to pay for it. This is a major event related to Dutch culture!”
Kennis had a keen eye and noticed Akkersdijk and his project through a former colleague. He considered SXSW a “strategic venue” to showcase his results. But Akkersdijk is looking for a big break and more than just showing off his pillows.
Akkersdijk said: “I thought, ‘Come on, man.’ Twitter was there, Foursquare was there, and all I could say when I got there was, ‘Look, I have a pillow!’ A pillow… and I had to Every time I explain to people, “This is for people with dementia” and their families. What am I doing? Friends, I am a designer. I want to make a set with conductive yarn. Clothes, but also call others to ask what exactly they need for SXSW.”
Friends who have attended SXSW told him that a common problem at music festivals is the inability to find reliable Wi-Fi hotspots. His colleagues, who were unable to attend the celebration, wished to follow him on the “map”. Because SXSW is primarily a music festival, Akkersdijk felt that his project should have a musical component. Luckily, a few of his friends who worked at ?22 Tracks had a great idea (and a potential promotional gimmick).
Therefore, BB.Suit was born. BB.Suit is a 3D knitted jumpsuit that comes with a battery pack, a Wi-Fi access point, a GPS tracker connected to a Google Maps interface, and a crowdsourced list that users can access and add to once connected to it. it.
Akkersdijk designed his wearable hardware as a bodysuit for a reason. “It leaves more room for other technologies,” he said. “If you design it as a simple sweater, people will treat it as a sweater. A jumpsuit will cause People will ask questions if they have a sense of space and time. Once they ask, you can introduce this one-piece suit to them. So this design itself is a form of interaction that we are committed to. ”
It did. The jumpsuit caught the attention of Beijing Design Week organizers, but Akkersdijk still felt it wasn’t worthy of SXSW. Once again, he refined his design by focusing on the festival site and trying to identify some of the local vexing problems that the onesie could solve.
“Smog and pollution are well-known issues in Beijing,” Akkersdijk said. “We went to a circular knitting company in Shanghai that is responsible for all of Nike’s knitting technology and has worked with Apple for many years to develop wearable technology that was previously unavailable.” The company invites us to its laboratory where it will help us improve our technology and develop various air filters.”
Akkersdijk found a research and development team from Germany who were developing a cold plasma current device for automotive air conditioning systems, but he found that the device was a bit bulky. The advantage of being large is that it can clean up to 30 square meters (about 100 square feet) of polluted air around the user. He decided his costume would also have an air filter that would allow people to “see through the air” and see how much smog was around them.
The effect of the clothing is good, its appearance is smoother and the design is more sophisticated than before. But his goal isn’t just to mass-market this “air freshening suit.”
Akkersdijk said: “This is just an attempt to verify a concept. The purpose is the same as SXSW, which is to find a method. This attempt still combines the three aspects of location, aesthetics and technology, and does not focus on one aspect, but It implements the concept of platforming the human body and its environment. Clothes can do different things depending on where they are. ”
Akkersdijk also sees the project as a first step toward the ultimate goal of wearable hardware: liberating communication from smartphones and enabling organic communication. To turn clothes into real communication platforms like smartphones and computers, Akkersdijk is negotiating with research centers and large Dutch companies such as Philips and NXP to create sensor-carrying threads, reduce their size and develop devices that can work as simply as smart threads. Smart clothing, Google is obviously doing this too.
At the time, Akkersdijk argued that most contemporary so-called wearable hardware wasn’t truly wearable (more accurately, “portable” and you had to enter the information yourself), but even so, the Apple Watch showed the beginnings of a new era of computing and communication. sign.
Akkersdijk said: “Communication has always been a driver of technology. The Apple Watch was the first to realize that we don’t need to type all the commands ourselves. Siri is working in that direction, focusing on if you go left, this is a vibration; if you go left Right go, it’s two shocks. It means people start thinking about physical communication, I think body language, heartbeat sharing is communication, but the new way of communication is to express where I want to go by rubbing my sleeves. Come say hello to your girlfriend; or you want to go to the bathroom in a strange place, and your body has read the message and will guide you to the nearest bathroom. “
Akkersdijk has been experimenting with sensor-laden clothing to convey thoughts and feelings long before the small-scale technologies that power the next generation of wearable hardware emerge. At a recent lecture, he wore a special sweater with sensors that monitor heart rate, location and other features to help assess the wearer’s own energy levels. Some spectators are also connected to sensors.
Akkersdijk said: “Some of them are wearing hand sensors, so everyone will suddenly see some real-time fluctuations on the big screen next to me. From this, we can see whether the audience likes my speech. There are many balls around everyone, Each ball is connected to a spectator, and if that spectator is not involved, his ball will land on a pin and, luckily, explode., there is no ball exploding here. The general idea is that the user doesn’t have to tell the device what they’re thinking, and the device can represent what’s going on. ”
Showing people’s “feelings” will undoubtedly further intrude on personal privacy, but Akkersdijk’s experimental results speak for themselves. He surveyed viewers who refused to wear hand-mounted sensors, and most of them regretted not wearing one. At first they want to protect their true feelings, but later they become more aware of their own feelings like others.
Akkersdijk said: “Everyone needs privacy. The key question is whether you are willing to disclose it. People maintain their own privacy, but at the same time they are curious to know other people’s secrets. We have to find out, but only if others tell us.” OK”, otherwise we wouldn’t know, just like people hide when they don’t want to be found.”
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