Later City News: What if our clothing could detect the movement and emotions of those around us? How technology expands our sensory experience and influences our social interactions? And in what ways our clothing could become a form of non-verbal communication, expressing through a color and texture change?
Behnaz Farahi is a designer, creative technologist, and critical maker working at the intersection of fashion, architecture, and interactive design. Trained as an architect, she explores the potential of interactive environments and their relationship to the human body.
Her goal is to enhance the interaction between human beings and the built environment by following morphological, and behavioral principles inspired by natural systems. Her work addresses critical issues such as emotion, bodily perception, and social interaction. She specializes in computational design, interactive technologies, additive manufacturing, and digital fabrication technologies.
Farahi has sought to illustrate how materials augmented with computational tools can serve as an emotional interface. In this process, two challenges have been addressed. One is how the user and the other is how to provoke a certain emotional response in the user through the implementation of dynamic behaviors such as color and shape change.
So, in terms of the first challenge, her goal is to detect the viewer’s emotion using a computer vision system and to store the information in the material system. In terms of the second challenge, the material then responds physically to the detected emotion in order to establish an affective loop with users. The intention is to explore how to shape and color-changing interfaces might be used in the future to express and simulate various emotions through non-human representation. These material interfaces could be a very effective tool for the communication of emotions. To read her full paper you click here.
Farahi has worked with leading firms such as Adidas, Autodesk, Fuksas Studio, and 3DSystems / will-i-am. She has also collaborated with Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis on two NASA funded research projects developing a robotic fabrication technology to 3D print structures on the Moon and Mars.
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