JOIN USA light that shows how you feel
Social media might be all about putting yourself in the spotlight, but a wearable device aims to make it a physical reality, too.
After working on indoor lighting projects, Nan Zhao, a PhD student in the Responsive Environments Group at MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was inspired to create Halo in an effort to wrestle lighting away from architecture and marry it to individuals. The resulting device contains 180 independently programmed LEDs that can change the colour and pattern of the hoop’s light, reflecting your mood, movement levels and the weather around you by syncing the information via an app.
The device, Zhao explains, builds on selfie culture. “On the Web, we present ourselves in the way we want, almost like we have multiple identities,” she says. Halo does this in the real world, allowing you to show yourself in the light you choose, in Zhao’s words, “kind of like an Instagram filter”.
The first of Zhao’s wearable lighting creations, Halo has so far been tested in situations from comedy improvisation to Halloween costumes and recently won the aesthetics award at the wearable computing conference in Japan. Having explored how people react to the technology, Zhao is collaborating with Yoav Reches, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, to make a more discreet version for everyday wear.
Its applications, says Zhao, are myriad. Among the scenarios she envisions are waiters donning the discs to appear both more visible and more approachable, and long-haul travellers using the Halo to adjust their body clocks. Perhaps more imaginatively, Zhao believes the device could offer an alternative to makeup — using light rather than applying pigments to brighten the wearer’s face.
Indeed with so many ideas for the future of Halo, the only question for Zhao is whether others will see the light.