The Clothing of the Future Could Shift Shape With Just a Glance

(jazzy music)

[Narrator] Caress of the Gaze is an art project

by architect and designer Behnaz Farahi.

It combines 3D printing, Shape Memory Alloy,

and computer vision technologies

to explore a vision of the future where our clothing

behaves like a second skin,

bristling, swelling, and transforming

in response to an observer's gaze.

I'm basically exploring the relationship of

human body to the space in various scales.

One of them is near environment scale,

which is fashion, or basically garments or clothing.

And then on the other hand I'm interested explore

how the environment can inform

our bodily presence into space.

[Narrator] The vest, which isn't for sale,

was inspired by involuntary biological responses

like pupil dilation, and yawning, and the chills.

An eye tracking camera, positioned above the sternum,

controls the garment, which like goosebumps,

behaves independently of the body it covers.

It can say Back off, without uttering a word.

A big obstacle to creating lifelike movement

was designing something that could bend and flex repeatedly.

When you 3D print a rigid substrate beside a flexible one,

a break will eventually form where they meet.

Farahi overcame this hurdle by printing her garment

across a grading of thicknesses.

The result looks surprisingly organic,

and behaves like an extension of the wearer's body.

Farahi's piece is slated to appear next February

at a show in Paris.

[Farahi] All of these things, at the very end, I think,

it's about connecting us and our body to the space around.

(jazzy music)