byBorre Tracks Human Behavior Through Clothes in This Innovative Experiment

With the advancement of technologies in health tracking and smart fabrics, we are increasingly converging upon a point in the course of human development where our clothes will effectively be able to talk back to us about our current state of wellbeing. This was demonstrated at a lecture held at the Science Park of Amsterdam by fabric development lab byBorre, in conjunction with the Distributed and Interactive Systems of CWI. There, a selection of lecture-goers were outfitted with biometric, heart rate and motion sensors attached to their hands, which would sense their level of engagement and broadcast it to the entire lecture. Concurrently, designer Borre Akkersdijk wore a circular-knitted byBorre sweater of conducive yarns that fed data from his body to a range of sensors as well while he delivered his lecture. As such, the experiment involved a conversation that went beyond mere words, where the common form of communication were bodily reactions quantified into solid datasets. See the experiment play out in the video above, and read more about byBorre’s recent collaboration with wings+horns here.