Heartbeats and Goosebumps: A Designer from San-Francisco On Clothing with Emotions

How biosmart technologies, gamification and design can all be applied to clothing? Which things can help reserved people communicate? What does «external intimacy» mean and how unconventional clothing helps people become more sincere and sensitive? Kristine Neidlinger, a physiotherapist, designer and head of the Sensoree Laboratory in San-Francisco shared on these subjects during the «Lighting Design 2016» international conference.

High Technologies and Inspiration

We are working on what's called «therapeutic biomedia». That's something like a biological approach to the clothes we wear. In a sense, our clothing is a signal we send to the world, and that results in something I call «external intimacy». Each of us uses clothing to show our inner selves. Costumes and projects we create help people feel more and be felt by others. People use glasses to enhance their vision. I strongly believe that we should use things that enhance our taction, as well.

I like it when modern technologies and handicraft combine. In my projects I use different materials — both natural and synthetic; there are even fabrics that we first print using a 3D printer then knit by hand. I also like adding computer technologies to my work.

ITMO University. Kristine Neidlinger

I seek inspiration in things strange and original. For instance, one of the things that affected my work was the widespread fear of robots — personally, I find it strange as it is we who create them. I wish we would create more sensitive, humane robots. I feel the same about people: our Sensoree technologies will help them become more open, more sincere.

I work with what we call synesthesia. We do something like intercrossing sensations, so that people are able to see emotions and feel sounds, and the like. We work with different biosensors in the organism — sight, skin, lungs, even the heart.

Mood Sweater

A project by Kristine Neidlinger Heart Sync

This was a project for people with autism. We've created a big banded collar fixed with LEDs that change colour depending on one's emotions. Thus, it shows if its owner is ready for communication, whether he feels secure. The sensors that read the level of anxiety are connected to one's hands. The colours range from the warm to the cold ones: the warmer it is, the more anxious the person is. I think this project can also be useful in working with artificial intelligence: to teach it to understand human behaviour and emotions. We'll probably get onto mass producing these collars in the nearest time.

Heart Sync — heartbeat synchronization

I designed a costume that links two people: one part reads one's heartbeat, the other — a headwear on another's head — translates it as sound. The heart rate is also reflected by color, thus our costume shows how heartbeats of different people can synchronize.

NeurotiQ Project

NeurotiQ is a headwear synchronized with an EKG-device

This project has to do with animating the brain and mapping one's conscious. For this project, we've used a 3D printer and optical fiber. We fixed it with 14 contacts like in the EKG-device and used the same from warm to cold color palette. For instance, if a person meditates, his front lobes «shine», if he's totally relaxed — his cerebellum does. We've presented this design on different healthcare conferences and fashion platforms. Once, we even made a presentation where anyone could put this thing on.

Goosebumps — share them!

Our Goosebumps project was to research how goosebumps emerge when one listens to the music he likes, thinks of something pleasant or enjoys arts. We've made artificial goosebumps on a jacket with silicon resin implants that inflated when one felt something pleasant. We fixed this costume with three sensors that reacted to breathing, heart rate and even the feeling of rapture. Breathing is depicted with rhythmic color change. This clothing allows one to feel that everyone understands you with no words said.

Goosebumps project

I liked the idea so much that I decided to create interlinked clothing that can transmit the feeling of goosebumps to another person. We've also studied the difference between goosebumps from cold and goosebumps from fear. It was quite a surprise to learn that about a fifth of our test subjects never felt goosebumps from something pleasant. Another thing we've learned is that healthy happy people experience such goosebumps the most. Our work can teach people listen to their emotions, to understand them better.

During the last years, we presented our costumes at different platforms all of the world — in San-Francisco, the fashion week in London, GeekPicnic in Russia, as well as many healthcare conferences. This year, we'll be presenting them in Bombei.