© 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved.
Experimental Fabric Could Give You Chameleon-Like Powers
Image source Vimeo

Experimental Fabric Could Give You Chameleon-Like Powers

Want to blend into your surroundings? That technology may be around the corner.

A Budapest-based textile designer incorporated sound and sensors into a fabric pattern that seems to give the wearer the ability to blend into the background.

Unfortunately, the clunky processors might limit the full chameleon factor.

Remember mood rings, the color-shifting trinkets with the supposed power to detect your emotional state? Those color changes were just due to heat from our skin touching the metal.

The Chomosonic project embraces a similar concept by using materials that respond to changes in temperature.

A similar design trick using thermochromatic pigments -- a specific type of dye that can react to the ambient temperature and change colors -- has been used with conductive thread to react with a person’s body temperature. Ever seen the shirts that change color when you start to get warm from a workout or just by placing your hand in a certain spot on the shirt?

The difference here: Chromosonic controls the temperature changes with sound waves.

"The dynamic changes in the textile color derive from processed sound files," the Chromosonic Vimeo page explains. "Silkscreen was used to cover the textile in a dye that changes with temperature. Sound makes the nichrome wires woven into the fabric heat up, changing the pattern."

Judit Eszter Karpati is the designer behind the project.

"My main interest in textile design is the dynamically changing surfaces, structures, integrating interactive technologies into textiles. In my works I’m looking for new ways of interaction between human and textile," Karpati said.

If you miss the days of Hypercolor T-shirts and long for the day when you can change the look of your clothes with a click of a button, check out the full video. This may be a step in that direction:

(H/T: Gizmodo)

Follow Elizabeth Kreft (@elizabethakreft) on Twitter

Want to leave a tip?

We answer to you. Help keep our content free of advertisers and big tech censorship by leaving a tip today.
Want to join the conversation?
Already a subscriber?