Studio Project 4: Networked Fashion 2 “Nature Symphony”

Due to a new wave of Covid-19 in Shanghai, we have to go back to online courses again. This brought lots of difficulties to every classmates. Therefore, for Studio Project 4, the professor decided that each of us could individualize our project based on our own interests and the materials we currently have. I felt really thankful for my friend Sherry who sent me several supplies such as the neopixels and the PixelBlaze. Since I was able to reach to these beautiful lights, I decided to make another networked fashion. For this project, I decided emphasize on the natural and relaxing feelings similar to the last studio project I made with Sherry. However, I wanted the outcome to be conveyed through more abstract patterns which is different from last time. Moreover, instead of choosing a specific music to fit into, I designed several code that expressed different elements in the nature. I hope this piece could fit to different calming musics with nature sounds, or even be wore to a park where users could change the patterns according to their emotions and the environmental sounds around them. If you are interested in how I made the piece, please read the following steps.

As I mentioned in the introduction, the new wave of Covid 19 in Shanghai caused many changes to our lives. When I noticed that Studio Project 4 was going to be individualized for everyone. I was not very sure about what I was going to make. Moreover, the building I was live in was locked down from Thursday to Sunday. Although Sherry has told me that she had some materials that I may needed, I did not contact her during the lockdown days as I was afraid that the delivery may lost. On Monday, luckily, the lockdown was over. I finally decided to get the supplies from Sherry and create another networked fashion.

When I successfully got the supplies, I started to think about what shall make? I couldn't think of a specific song that I was passioned to use. Moreover, there were several places to improve in our last assignment, for example: Shall we add more natural sounds to the sound track? Could we use our patterns on other songs? How could we add elements to both the front and the back of the garment? How could we blend the garment and the neopixel wires together so the wires didn't look ugly in settings with light? Is it better to sew the wires onto the garment rather than using the hot glue? Hoping to find the answers of these questions, I decided to create a piece that:

1. could fit to different calming/relaxing musics that have nature sounds
2. have patterns that both in the front and the back
3. consistent with the neopixels wire

When looking at the neopixel wires, I thought of one of my green shirt which could both fit to the theme of nature and have a consistent color with the neopixel wires. I decided to use the neopixel wires to form the shape of several cirrus in the front of the garment. For the back of it, I found a picture of a simple lotus online and was thinking about sewing this pattern. However, I was not sure whether the 84 neopixels I had was enough. If I used up all the neopixels, I would make the lotus using the other leds I had. I also left some parts of the neopixels not sew to the garment but hanging in the air to create a flowing effect. Furthermore, I thought it would be a good choice to make a long skirt to match the shirt. Therefore, I bought several cloth from Taobao.

On Thursday, I sketched out my ideas. You could see my design sketch in the above pictures. After presenting my ideas to the class, I realized two potential problems I may have from Professor Minsky's comment. The first one was that the the neopixels wire may be too light in weight and the hanging part may not move as I imagined. To solve this problem, I decided to buy some little bells to stick onto the hanging wire to add on some weight and make the design more special. Another issues was that due to the limited time I had, I may not able to finish all of my design especially the skirt part.

I started the sewing process on Sunday night and finished sewing everything on Monday night. The process was similar to the sewing of EL wires. I first used paper tape to make sure the position of every neopixels. A difficulty I met was that during the positioning process, one of the connections between the wire and one of the neopixel rings was broken and I had to soldering them back again. I failed the first time and I had to break everything and tried again. Finally, I successfully connected them together. After positioning all my neopixels, I realized that my prediction was right, I did not have enough neopixels to make the lotus on the back of the shirt. I planned to use some other materials to make them if I had enough time later. Then, I started sewing. The sewing process went pretty smooth. It is obvious that the effect created by sewing is better than using the hot glue. The only shortcoming was that sewing was so much more time-consuming.

I tried to figure out coding on the next day. Since in the last networked fashion assignment, Sherry took most of the coding job, I was not very familiar with the coding part. After viewing the existing codes and the tutorial we was given, I decided to build my patterns from the existing codes. To further explain, I would open one relaxing music, identified the nature elements that I heard, chose the existing code that I felt was consistent to that sound, and changed the colors, saturation, lightness, and positions of light, as well as timing of that code. I have uploaded all my codes to Github and here is the link: https://github.com/az1938/E-textiles-Studio-Project-4

Another interesting fact I found was that I could use my phone to connect to the PixelBlaze and live coding while wearing the garment. This made my idea of wearing this piece to a park and changing the patterns according to the surrounding environment possible. However, due to Covid-19, I could not actually try that. Hopefully, I would be able to do that when the situation gets better.

After finishing coding, it was already Tuesday night. To finish the piece, I sticked the bells I bought onto the hanging wires and brushed silver nail polish to the colorful wires of the neopixel rings to maintain the color consistency. I realized that I didn't have enough time to make the skirt as well as the lotus on the back of the garment. On the other hand, the cloth I bought was already here and I really wanted to use them. Finally, I decided to wrap them around me so they still looked like a skirt when I was taking the pictures. The effect was pretty well and the temporary skirt I made matched quite well with the shirt.

Finally, we came to the video taking phase. I asked my mom to chose three random songs that had nature sounds in it from Youtube. Then, I would listen to the music, control the PixelBlaze by using my phone, and chose the patterns that I have made to fit to the nature sounds or the feelings I got from the music. The final effect was showed in the above videos.

There are many future improvements that I could make. The first one is definitely adding the lotus to the back of the garment as showed in my design. Another thing I could try is to actually sew the skirt out. Moreover, I could always add more codes that represent different sounds from nature. Moreover, I could add a pocket either inside the shirt or one the skirt to place to the PixelBlaze and the charger. I would like to keep building to this piece in the second half of the semester. Hopefully, we could get back to in-person courses in the end of this semester and I could show an upgraded version of it on the IMA show!