JOIN USThe clothing that reacts to your gaze
It’s a garment that might attract a second glance — made as it is of an unusual array of 3D printed quills. But beware, the scrutiny is mutual. Designed by LA-based artist and architect Behnaz Farahi and on show at the Artists in Residence exhibition, Pier 9, Autodesk in San Francisco next month, this stylish top, titled Caress of the Gaze, is ‘conscious’ — the cropped tunic has a concealed eye-tracking camera that allows the garment to respond physically to a passing stare.
Farahi’s intention is to create garments that are “an extension of our own skin”, looking to nature’s clothing — skin, scales and feathers — for inspiration, taking note of the “different porosities, different densities, and different behaviours” of the constituent parts.
The design has an organic appearance, almost mimicking the feathered breast of a bird. But the quills are housed in a semi-flexible mesh laced with “muscle wire” that, much like our muscles, contracts and relaxes in unison to create the movement in the garment, all of which is computed from the gaze of the onlooker, captured by the camera.
The camera can also detect gender and, less accurately, age — parameters which, Farahi reveals might, be incorporated into future designs. But she is also keen to explore how tech-laden clothing can translate both external and internal social pressures. “Technology will enhance our bodily function and give us a power that our body doesn’t have,” she says.