Ramona calls Berlin home, but Ramona is a nomad. Ramona says, "If you're not movin', you're not groovin'." Ramona is the European Regional Director of Product Design for a large cosmetics firm. That's why Ramona needs threads that are entirely convertible. She needs to be au courant in every scene. She needs style, speed, versatility, high performance—and she needs to be in touch.

Want the specifications? For starters, the color and size of this ensemble can be converted according to the wearer's preferences. All Ramona has to do is insert her coded ID card in the waist pocket to engage the starter. She can select or install new preferences.

Her Options:

Designers
Tamae Hirokawa and Yoshiyuki Miyamae

What do technology and the arts have in common? Communication. Innovation. Versatility. Creativity. In Ravena, Italy, Flexus and Ottavia try to embody these similarities in their dance improvisations. Their costumes are perfectly suited for dancers who must think on their feet. Their clothing is actually an instrument that "plays" in response to their movements. Electric field sensors woven into the fabric interface with mini MIDI synthesizers sewn into Flexus's jacket and Ottavia's dress. An amplifier and speakers are sewn into Flexus's jacket, and his pants are equipped with transmitters and receptors. Ottavia's armband holds her speakers and volume controls, and her dress carries the rest of her sound system. Both dancers store the batteries for their techno-accompaniment in their shoes. As the duo dances, the synthesizer is played by manipulating the air around their bodies.

Designers
Ricardo Prado, Maria Ella Carrera, Josefina Batres

Technology Collaborator
Joshua Smith

Research Links
LazyFish

Amateur antiquarian and international tour guide, Jasmin finds herself in the Nara National Musem in Japan a few days before her around-the-world tour group arrives. She has never studied Japanese artifacts before and knows she'll have to learn a lot very quickly, but she is not alarmed. At the entrance, she is equipped with a Museum Guide System—a pair of headphones that interface with her own personal "Guide System" ring, which stores information about her individual preferences and previous museum experiences. As she makes her way through the galleries and stops at the artifacts that catch her eye, she points her ring at each identifying tag. A voice chip in the headphones gives her historical particulars about the artifact. Accessing the data stored in her ring, the Guide notes that this particular artifact, a bronze bell, has a companion in Paris that she saw only three months ago.

The Museum Guide is a personal agent that suggests certain areas of the collection of interest to Jasmin. Guides can be linked together, allowing companions to find one another if they get separated.

Jasmin's Museum Guide System is designed for a museum of antiquities. The ensemble of gold jewelry coordinates with Jasmin's pure white two-piece dress.

Research Links
Augmented Reality
Nomadic Radio

Designers
Nao Muramatsu, Hisayoshi Kuroda, Junko Ito, and Keiko Minomo

Technology Collaborators
Thad Starner and Joseph Kaye

He's late—for a very important date. He's hot—but time to cool off he's not got. What cotton trader Rachid El-Ahazi does have is pizzazz and a business suit that keeps him calm, collected, and cool. As a representative for Egypt's leading woven cotton manufacturer, Rachid needs to keep himself even-tempered and imperturbable when heat waves and the inevitable crises of production and sales mount.

Rachid's suit has a cooling system woven into those crucial junctures (underarms, back, crotch), and his chic back-pack/attaché case houses the lightweight power that drives his silent source of cool.

Designer
Christina Olsson

Technology Collaborator
Rehmi Post

What's the perfect working outfit for a documentary film-maker? Monitor wear, of course. History happens everywhere all at once and Rosa doesn't miss a minute of it sitting in a dark and dreary editing room. With monitor wear she can connect her video equipment to her clothing. She can view rushes—even edit on the move—and whether her subject is a group of Tibetan Nomads, or truck drivers in the Southwestern US, being on the move is the status quo.

Some of the panels can be used for video editing functions, while others might be playing a previous piece of her work—or even serve as a computer interface or television receiver. Washable and comfortable, this is the clothing for the real live wire.

Don't feel like making a projection of yourself today? The panels can enliven the design of the dress by showing changing patterns and colors, or even static images.

These dresses have been created as a proposal for the future realization of a wearable monitor. Monitor fabric technology has not yet caught up with our vision, so we have substituted holographic fabrics for this display. We hope that with continuing research into conductive fabric technologies, our imagination may soon be eclipsed by reality.

Designers
Ayako Toyota, Katuhiko Togano, Takanobu Senoo, Ryota Miyahara, Tomoki Ikeda, and Ken Baba