Dynamically Lit Jewelry and Smart Backpacks
17 march 2017 creative lighting design fashion futurum future technologies Jewelry smart fashion smart textile wearable electronics
Valeria Mikoluk and Roman Antonov, the master's students from ITMO's Creative Lighting Department, presented their prototypes at the Fashion Futurum International Conference in collaboration with independent designer Ekaterina Kuklina. The event took place in Moscow as part of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. The event focused on synthesis of fashion and technology, which is why projects by ITMO students — a chameleon jacket, jewelry with dynamic lighting and a backpack with turn signals — could not have come at a better time.
The team presented several items (a brooch on a levitating disk, a jewel and a pendant) that had more functions than just looking good. As it turned out, jewelry can be useful.
— We've developed dynamic light jewelry based on optical fibers. This allowed us to create novel and, what's most important, unique light effects — to some, this will remind them of the Milky Way, to others — movement of neurons, — shares Valeria Mikoluk.
So, what is the use of such items? For instance, such jewelry can track a person's pulse. Also, they can be fixed with such functions as reading body temperature, or temperature of the surrounding environment. Yet, the designers aim at solving other tasks, like developing new types of communication that have to do with one's emotional state. For example, if you want to show your emotions more obviously, your jewelry can help you by changing its lighting intensity, color or pulsation. Such jewelry can show its wearer's emotional condition, like whether he's calm or tense. Surely, not everyone would like to disclose his emotions, but many would like to own such items. Thus, the designers offer programmable jewelry, so that each can match colors to emotions as he likes. It's common knowledge that light diodes come in a range of colors. For instance, the chameleon jacket can render 256 shades, so one can create his own individual palette.
Photo report by Evgenia Bulgakova from the event in Moscow
