Cute Circuit.

Cute Circuit are pushing the boundaries of fashion and technology, making technology more wearable and visually appealing. With the use of lighting in their garments, they create a wearable show piece. Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz are the pair behind the ground breaking creations. 

Their aim is to create resonant, fashionable, visually and emotionally attractive designs. 

http://cutecircuit.com/portfolio/little-black-dress/

The reinvention of the black dress, embedded with thousands of LEDs. These move and change to create thousands of different compositions and patterns. 

http://cutecircuit.com/portfolio/twitter-dress/

The first Haute couture Twitter dress, which receives and displays tweets in real time, the dress can directly be tweeted via #tweetthedress showing the display in LEDs. 

http://cutecircuit.com/portfolio/kinetic-dress/#prettyPhoto

Kinetic dress reactive to the mood and activities of the wearer. The dress is embedded with sensors that closely follow the form of the body, which capture the wearer's movements and interaction with others, which is then displayed via electroluminescent embroidery. This display changes depending on who is around the wearer. When the wearer is alone the dress remains a black dress, but when interacting with others or moving, the dress begins to light up and create moving patterns. 

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It's amazing what is so seemingly achievable wearable technology is these days, and this definitely shows that is bound to become something that everyone is eventually wearing in some way or another. The kinetic dress especially, is not a million miles away from my concept, and this idea shows that my concept could realistically be achieved in some way. If this kinetic dress is able to respond to activity and make patterns according to surroundings, a dress that reveals data doesn't sound so out there at all and is actually something that could become a reality in some form. 

Stitching Data.

After looking at the cross stitching charts and realising a link between marking out patterns for cross stitch and data charts, I decided that it could be interesting to stitch out some of my own charts. I feel that by doing this that I could potentially add another dimension to my prints, adding multiple layers and also a bit of texture and depth. 

The back of these pieces I also felt could work well as they look to represent a journey, which is something that I have also been recording as the project goes along, so this could be another way of translating that perhaps?

Initial Human Form.

I initially started to put my shapes into a more human shape by layering them on top of a photo. These created quite bulky forms I think, and I don't think they work particularly well, especially not the hand shape, which I don't think i'll use again in any way. 

I could perhaps try experimenting with the human form further, since I want my prints and patterns to go onto the body, it would be good for the imagery to have some relevance to people.

Freddie Robins.

http://gabydurnford.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/freddie-robins.html

Laura suggested, although not directly related to my project, that I look into a project that knitter Freddie Robins undertook. These projects seem to have been taken down from her website as the links no longer work, how ever I found a blog post on the project (referenced above). The project was 'how to make a piece of work when you are too tired to make decisions'. Robin's came up with a way of relieving all decisions of how to create work, and relied on 3 dice. One dice was to select the colour of yarns, one to give numbers for the stitches and rows and one to decide the technique that was to be knitted. 

I think this is vaguely related to my concept with the idea that I could play by a set of rules, so I could select a colour for each thing I do, select a shape for each thing I do, have a certain way of arranging things etc, so that everything is decided but in possibly a predetermined way by the rules. 

Coding Inspiration.

Norsk Bilde studios

Ibm Punchcards- www.columbia.edu

www.jeff-barr.com


Having come across the top image randomly in a layout book, I was inspired by the graphical element of marking out crosses to show where cross stitch would go to make a pattern. The areas then that were punch through reminded me of punch cards, which of course are an old fashioned way of coding computers, and also a way of programming looms for weaving and knitting.
I like the effect of many holes combining together to create a pattern, something that I could perhaps bring into my work? 
These did also remind me of brail and morse code, which are both different means of communicating via code. 

Punch Tape- minnalmalayali.blogspot.com

Punch card fabric- www.spoonflower.com

Tutorial Notes.

Laura:
- False persona
- Combining together visual imagery/data tracking?
- Look into Freddy Robbins.
- Cells- coding decoding? Do I want to look into this aspect of data?
- Is it to do with the body and the person or is it to do with activity?
- Layering up data
- Identity side or digital pollution? Health aspects?
- Look back to original concept
- Pick out key aspects, work out what trying to say
- News- fake realities
           - facts and figures
           - data/dating profiles
- Is it completely abstract/element of human?

Alex:
- Obscuring reality with the data?
- Putting data patterns over imagery
- Information is clouding what it represents
- Ways of arranging- timeline
- Symbols/images
- Blocks
- Hand drawing/collage
- Fake program interface
- Colour/ shape/ thickness of line.

Ordering Data Visuals.

Here I've experimented, still using graph paper, but without that actual graph and the numbers to reveal time scale. I think these work quite well as visuals in their own right, i've drawn back into the shapes by hand, which I think could be a quite effective touch, combining digital and hand drawn elements.