Artist and designer Sebastian Errazuriz used twelve of his former flames as the inspiration for these 3D-printed shoes.
This image: Cry Baby. Main image: Honey
“I had been interested for years in creating a project that could revisit the relationships and women that had been so important at another time,” Errazuriz told Dezeen. “Like anyone else I have always found it quite incredible that when it comes to romantic relationships over the years, different people will represent a vital role in our lives even though later we might never see many of them again.”
Cry Baby
In 12 Shoes for 12 Lovers, each of the high-heeled shoes is designed for a woman Errazuriz previously had a relationship with, some of which lasted years and others just one night.
Heart Breaker
“The idea was to try and review those past sexual and romantic relationships from a distance of time,” said Errazuriz. “To expose yourself to scrutiny and judgment and invite others to check their own romantic relationships with their beauties, flaws, failures and success.”
Heart Breaker
The shape of each shoe represents how he remembers its counterpart: either by a nickname, a personal attribute or sexual behaviour.
The Boss
First in the series is Honey, a shoe formed from a yellow honeycomb pattern modelled on a girl that was too nice for him.
The Boss
Red shoes in the collection include Heart Breaker, which has an arrow through the back, Hot Bitch that appears to be melting and The Jetsetter with an aeroplane model forming a stiletto heel.
G.I. Jane
The green G.I. Jane shoe has a small soldier figurine on the toe, made for a girl who went commando on their date and who’s father was an army colonel.
The Virgin
A pure white effigy of the Virgin Mary forms the heel on another, with her garments flowing into the front of the design. Other models are named The Ghost, The Rock and The Boss.
The Rock
All of the shoes were digitally modelled then 3D-printed from PET plastic using a Makerbot Replicator 2.
Jet Setter
“It’s the first time we used a 3D printer,” Errazuriz told Dezeen. “The idea was to create digital sculptures on 3D programs that could then not only be used to fabricate one-off shoe sculptures that could be purchased by an art collector, but also have the potential to be turned into injection plastic moulds.”
Gold Digger
The collection is on show at a pop-up shop for Brazilian shoe brand Melissa in Miami until 6 January.
Alchemist Lauren Bowker has embedded ink that changes colour depending on different climatic conditions into a feathered garment (+ movie).
Bowker designs clothing and sculptures to demonstrate how the inks she has developed blend from one colour to another depending on the surrounding environment.
Her extravagant PHNX fashion pieces were made from feathers impregnated with the ink, which respond to light, heat and friction so they ripple with changing tones as the wearer moves.
“I chose the feathers because the piece was about the birth of something new and the piece goes through dark phases to light, which is meant to be spiritual,” Bowker told Dezeen at the Wearable Futures conference where she presented the project earlier this week.
PHNX fashion piece
She also collaborated with photographer Ryan Hopkinson to create Valediction, a sculpture made from white leaves covered in thermochromatic ink so they would turn blue when they became hot. When the piece was ignited, the colours mapped the destruction before it occurred.
Bowker began her research by creating a pollution-absorbent ink called PdCl2, which changes colour from yellow to black in dirty conditions then reverts back in fresh air.
At the Royal College of Art she developed the product into ink that can respond to a variety of different environmental conditions.
“I graduated with an ink which is respondent to seven different parameters in the environment,” Bowker said. “Not only will it absorb air pollution, it will change colour to UV, heat, air friction, moisture and more. This gives it the capability to go through the full RGB scale.”
“Each ink works very differently, it depends on what sort of material you want to apply it to,” she added.
The inks can be applied to most materials using various methods, depending on the characteristics of the surface. “You can screen-print it, paint it, spray it, or alternatively you can dye things with it, impregnating the fibres with the colour,” Bowker explained.
After presenting the technology in fashion pieces, it was picked up by a range of companies who asked her to collaborate on projects including a concept aeroplane cabin by Airbus. “Everyone saw this technology and saw their own vision of how they could use it,” said Bowker.
She can customise the inks to change colour in specific places by mapping the conditions at the locations and creating an ink to respond to these parameters.
“If you came to me and said ‘Lauren, I want my silk jersey to change colour when I’m at Oxford Street, then when I’m at Baker Street I want to be a different colour’, I would go out and map the fluctuations in the environment of each tube station then I would create you an ink that responds to those environments,” Bowker said.
Bowker recently set up The Unseen, a design house for biological and chemical technology house to raise awareness of the product and further the applications of her creation by making it more affordable. The company aims to launch a collection using the materials at London Fashion Week in February 2014.
Valediction sculpture
In the future, Bowker hopes the inks will be adopted by the medical industry: “If it goes into a T-shirt that lets you know if you’re going to have an asthma attack, that for me is much more successful than having an amazing fashion collection.”
Bowker presented her work at the Wearable Futures conference at Ravensbourne in London, which concluded yesterday.
Here is some more information from the designer:
Multi-award winning alchemist Lauren Bowker leads prophetic art house The Unseen. Focused on Seeing The Unseen; The Unseen is a luxury design house and consultancy that integrates biological, chemical and electronic technology into fashion, through materials.
Philosophy
“The Unseen believes technology IS magic. My vision is to create a world of seamlessly captivating science; through exquisite couture, luxury products and opulent materials; in lieu of the believer searching for special pieces and unique experiences. To do this I will build a House and environment that both appeal intriguingly and aesthetically. That is well informed, well educated, inventive and sensitive to both Technology and Design. Offering luxury attire enhanced with technical magic that will lead fashion. I trust in the unseen world around us, it can offer beauty, magic and faith. I want others to see what I see.”
Valediction sculpture
Valediction
A collaboration with genius Ryan Hopkinson.
Valediction depicts the burning of a sculpture made entirely from the skeletons of leaves, hand painted in Thermochromic, Heat tracking Pigments to appear blue. The sculpture, once ignited, acts as a mapping tool of its own destruction. The Thermochromatic treatment allows the viewer to witness patterns of heat flux in real time as the leaves combust and the flames propagate. With a starting height of eight feet the sculpture is reduced to nothing within ten seconds leaving only ash and a limited number of high resolution photographs as physical proof of it’s existence. On first glance aesthetic beauty conceals the technology, while the true nature of the sculpture is exposed through destruction by flame. Data is made available and witnessed in real-time, illustrating a new platform for physical visualisation.
PHNX
Through the expansion of many types of ink PHNX is an original take on dynamic chromic imaging. Using existing and vast variables from the immediate human habitat as an external input to the PHNX sensory ink, forming an array of new Chromic materials within natural structures. Resulting in a constructed and dynamically controlled textile that is capable of constantly evolving, continually changing colour state in front of the viewer’s eyes. Inspired by reincarnation and the cycle of life PHNX was intended to enhance the beauty of Technology in materials and the imagination of experimentation within Fashion providing an aesthetic that provokes discourse on beauty of materials in fashion, technology, interaction and data.
Valediction sculpture
PdCl2
The multi award winning PdCl2 ink is designed to treat the symptoms of hazardous lifestyles we live in today. The Chromic Dye is capable of reacting in the presence of carbon emission. Presenting a reversible colour change from yellow to black. The surrounding concept addresses issues in health as a result of passive smoking, logically evolving into a platform that aesthetically visualises environmental conditions. Using Material to offer an innovative language within visual communication.
Researchers at Italian design centre Fabrica have created accessories that would deceive neuroimaging devices by diverting thoughts using electric shocks and flashing lights (+ slideshow).
Lisa Kori Chung and Caitlin Morris from Fabrica designed the anti-NIS (neuroimaging surveillance) pieces to detect when surveillance technology linked to CCTV cameras is trying to read the wearer’s brainwaves. It would then focus their thoughts to something inconsequential to help maintain privacy.
They say neuroimaging technology is currently being researched and developed to read and record the thoughts of the public, with the aim to detect ill intentions before they are carried out.
However this raises issues of privacy, so Kori Chung and Morris are proposing to mask thoughts using a range of wearable devices.
Each faceted piece covered with decorative patterns is designed to detect when the wearer is being scanned and provides a distraction to change their thought pattern.
“Rather than simply blocking access to the brain, which would require unsubtle and complex equipment, each piece proposes a method of momentary cognitive diversion,” said the designers.
“When a scan is detected, the accessories provoke a sensory reaction that will demand the wearer’s attention, changing their current brain activity patterns and affording a moment of privacy through camouflage.”
The hat transmits sound pulses through the skull to the ear, the collar gives a gentle electric shock and the mask emits light flashes into the wearer’s eyes.
This means that at the moment of the scan, the wearer’s thoughts are more likely to be read as “this light is too bright” or “that’s a strange sound” rather than what their mind might have been preoccupied with otherwise.
Even though the implementation of neuroimaging technology is still science fiction, the project aims to raise awareness of other surveillance techniques currently used in conjunction with CCTV such as facial recognition, motion detection and voice analysis.
The project was designed for the Futures 10 exhibition of wearable technology, displayed last night as part of the Wearable Futures conference at Ravensbourne in London.
Wearables to thwart neuroimaging surveillance by Lisa Kori Chung and Caitlin Morris
The paradigm of clothing as protector and concealer is slowly shifting: increasingly, our bodies are becoming more and more public (though security practices as well as fashion choices), while new forms of neuro-imaging technology are developing that may one day allow for surveillance and interception of the contents of our minds. Anti-NIS Accessories is a series of proposed objects designed as a form of clothing that maintains privacy of thought and action.
Rather than simply blocking access to the brain, which would require unsubtle and complex equipment, each piece proposes a method of momentary cognitive diversion. When a scan is detected, the accessories provoke a sensory reaction that will demand the wearer’s attention, changing their current brain activity patterns and affording a moment of privacy through camouflage. The objects include a hat that transmits sound pulses through bone conduction, a collar that gives a gentle electric shock and a mask that distracts the user with flashing lights.
Can the purpose of clothing be expanded to serve a hybrid purpose: acting as an expressive covering of the body, and also maintaining privacy of things like emotions, intelligence, and even more specific “brain data”?
These are the wider questions we asked:
Today, closed-circuit video surveillance has become commonplace. Concurrent with its rise in ubiquity, new techniques are being developed for analysing the massive amounts of information generated. Biometric identification techniques such as FRT (facial recognition technology), gait analysis, and voice analysis are often used after an incident has taken place to try to determine the identities of the parties involved. However, now various companies are working on algorithms to detect persons acting “suspiciously” (perhaps based on activities such as running, loitering and carrying packages). We are entering a new period of algorithmic guessing of intention based on external behaviours, before an incident takes place.
What if brain-scanning could be periodically deployed in a widespread and stealthy manner in urban environments, similar to CCTV now? Already our notions of civil liberties and bodily privacy are being challenged on an everyday basis, how should they be defined in the future in terms of the mind?
Flaps in this range of clothing by Dutch fashion designer Pauline van Dongen open up to reveal solar panels, enabling the wearer to become a walking mobile phone charger (+ movie).
“Wearable Solar is about integrating solar cells into fashion, so by augmenting a garment with solar cells the body can be an extra source of energy,” Van Dongen told Dezeen at the Wearable Futures conference in London. “It’s really about the true integration of technology and fashion, which can transcend the realm of gadgets.”
The dress features 72 flexible cells attached to panels on the front of the garment that can be folded outwards to capture sunlight. Forty-eight rigid crystal solar panels are incorporated into leather flaps on the jacket’s shoulders and waist so they can be revealed when the sun shines and hidden when not in use.
A standard charging plug connects the solar panels directly to a mobile device, and Van Dongen claimed that a garment exposed to direct sunlight for one hour could capture enough energy to charge a typical smartphone to 50 percent capacity.
Van Dongen said the comfort and weight of these garments could be improved by experimenting with flexible photovoltaic cells, adding that other hardware such as batteries also needs to be refined before wearable technology will become part of everyday life.
“Wearability is very important to my work because I am a fashion designer,” explained Van Dongen. “We’re dealing here with the human body and it’s not just a static body, it’s dealing with movement and expressions, a sensory surface so it’s very important to stress the wearability.”
“We’re not very far away from people actually wearing these garments that I design,” said Van Dongen, adding that the project team are also currently seeking investment to translate it into a commercially viable enterprise.
“I think it’s important to see which technologies are really ready to be implemented, how people would deal with them, how people would feel in those clothes, what it could mean to them. And of course looking at the cost of these technologies. If you’re integrating 80 solar cells then of course you’re adding to the cost and you have to look at how much people are willing to pay for it.”
The project is being presented at Wearable Futures, an event showcasing innovations in wearable technologies which is taking place in London from 10-11 December.
Here is some more information from the designer:
Wearable Solar
Solar cells have been constructed to capture solar light and convert it into electricity. Their internal structure is layered and resembles the stratified cells of the human body, which naturally interacts with sunlight. If a body is augmented with solar cells it will embody enough electrical power to become a real source of energy. For the Wearable Solar project, a coat and a dress have been designed placing solar cells close to the body.
The two wool and leather prototypes comprise parts with solar cells which can be revealed when the sun shines or folded away and worn invisibly when they aren’t directly needed. The coat incorporates 48 rigid solar cells while the dress 72 flexible solar cells. Each of them, if worn in the full sun for an hour, can store enough energy to allow a typical smartphone to be 50% charged. The Sun is the biggest source of energy on earth and now that fossil fuels are depleting, it’s time we come up with a sustainable alternative.
The multi-disciplinary team behind Wearable Solar is composed by: Pauline van Dongen, Christiaan Holland (Project leader Gelderland Valoriseert from the HAN) and Gert Jan Jongerden (Solar-energy expert).
London designer and researcher Shamees Aden is developing a concept for running shoes that would be 3D-printed from synthetic biological material and could repair themselves overnight.
Photograph by Sam J Bond
Shamees Aden‘s Protocells trainer would be 3D-printed to the exact size of the user’s foot from a material that would fit like a second skin. It would react to pressure and movement created when running, puffing up to provide extra cushioning where required.
Aden developed the project in collaboration with Dr Martin Hanczyc, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark who specialises in protocell technology. Protocells are very basic molecules that are not themselves alive, but can be combined to create living organisms.
By mixing different types of these non-living molecules, scientists are attempting to produce artificial living systems that can be programmed with different behaviours, such as responsiveness to pressure, light and heat.
“The cells have the capability to inflate and deflate and to respond to pressure,” Aden told Dezeen at the Wearable Futures conference in London. “As you’re running on different grounds and textures it’s able to inflate or deflate depending on the pressure you put onto it and could help support you as a runner.”
After a run, the protocells in the material would lose their energy and the shoes would be placed in a jar filled with protocell liquid, which would keep the living organisms healthy. The liquid could also be dyed any colour, causing the shoes to take on that colour as the cells rejuvenate.
“You would take the trainers home and you would have to care for it as if it was a plant, making sure it has the natural resources needed to rejuvenate the cells,” said the designer.
Aden added that her footwear project was intended to help a broader range of people comprehend the potential of protocell technology, and claimed the speculative results could become reality by 2050.
The project is being presented at Wearable Futures, an event focusing on innovations in wearable technologies taking place in London from 10-11 December.
Photography is by the designer unless otherwise stated.
A Dolce & Gabbana Christmas conjures images of leopard-print stockings hung by the chimney with care and a tree draped in black lace, but the Italian duo have put on their Santa hats (red velvet, ermine trim) for one of their favorite casas away from casa: Claridge’s. The London hotel enlisted Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana to design its annual Christmas tree (pictured). This year’s festive fair is decked out in hand-crafted Sicilian puppets known as pupi, hand-painted Italian glass baubles, and a custom-made “luminaire” framework created in Southern Italy. Note the designers, “Our Christmas tree isn’t only a celebration of Christmas as we celebrate it in Italy, but it’s at the same time a tribute to the artisanal Italian tradition.
Voici le nouveau travail de Franck Bohbot, un photographe français vivant à New York. Avec The Game We Play, il s’amuse à recenser les terrains de basket-ball et de street-ball qui se trouvent dans la ville, permettant de dévoiler différentes ambiances. Une belle série à découvrir en images dans la suite de l’article.
Après plusieurs séries dont certaines ont été diffusées sur Fubiz, le photographe hongrois Akos Major revient avec cette sélection d’images appelée « Spiaggia ». Toujours à la recherche d’espaces vides, l’artiste immortalise ici des plages, vidées de touristes du fait de la terne saison, et donc offre un contraste intéressant.
Basée à Saint-Pétersbourg, l’artiste Arina Pozdnyak nous offre une série de posters et calendrier d’une beauté incroyable. Perpetual Calendar, c’est tout simplement une approche minimaliste de l’objet, proposant d’oublier le jour exact pour vivre l’instant présent. Des images de nature superbement travaillées.
Spring 2013 saw the introduction of Giro’s cycling lifestyle collection New Road. While the initial launch was semi-soft, Fall 2013 made waves when launched a month or so ago…
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
A Dolce & Gabbana Christmas conjures images of leopard-print stockings hung by the chimney with care and a tree draped in black lace, but the Italian duo have put on their Santa hats (red velvet, ermine trim) for one of their favorite casas away from casa: 
