#technosensual

Pulsating Clothing that Mimics Bodily Response

Here's some prime weirdness. For Technosensual, an Austrian exhibition at the MuseumsQuartier Wien, Dutch firm Local Androids produced "Like Living Organisms," a fabric that mimics your organism's natural activity when you're upset, nervous or ... interested.

The "skin" and "veins" that compose the garment beat visibly in the company of others, then deflate when touched as a "sign of trust", according to the designers.

The hand-painted outfit includes two sensors and air pumps. When a person approaches you, one sensor makes air flow through the outfit's "veins", simulating a pulse. The second sensor flattens the veins when you are touched.

From the designers:

It is made out of a silicone named 'dragon skin,' the same silicone is used to make props for the film industry, like masks or flesh wounds. We painted it with a special silicone paint named 'psycho paint.' The psycho paint is also a form of silicone and can be mixed with regular oil paint or pigment to give it color. We carved skin textures in our molds so when we painted it with thinned reddish psycho paint the skin texture became more visible as you can see on the skin texture closup picture. Then another thin layer of base skin color to give it more depth and finally we added some freckles. The beautiful thing about dragon skin is that you can mix it close to the transparency of human skin. And then build it up like layers of skin starting with the base color then adding a layer of red and finishing with another layer of base skin color.