DUTCH DESIGNER ANOUK WIPPRECHT

ENTER THE AGE OF INTELLIGENT CLOTHING!

Interview: Daniel Chardon

Anouk Wipprecht reminds us of pioneers like Tesla, Jules Verne or Leonardo da Vinci. They all come across as weird to their contemporaries; they and their ideas were all once ahead of their time. They all constitute harbingers of an as yet not precisely-defined future. In retrospect their ideas are often visionary. It is Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht’s vision to create clothes which know and can feel what their wearer want, both physically and mentally. The technology deployed, hence the concept Fashion Tech, is ultimately intended to help us understand one another better in the process. Clothing becomes the expression of our inner feelings as it were! At the same time Anouk Wipprecht is a female front runner. She wishes that more women would use technology innovatively and take on leadership roles. In the beginning she was apparently not taken seriously as a woman, but the number of companies like Intel who are now systematically promoting women is growing.

Actually her creativity reaches a dimension that makes her deserving of the title of artist well beyond designer. Her futuristic designs, which present themselves as breathtaking visually, sometimes remind one of H.R. Giger’s characters in Ridley Scott’s Alien. They light up, are interactive (Spider Dress), emit smoke (Smoke Dress) and even listen to the body of the wearer and her environment and react to the feelings of the wearer. Her inroads into the United States, especially the outfit for Fergie and the Black Eyed Peas for the 2011 Superbowl, put the global spotlight on her. Engagements at Audi, Disney and Cirque du Soleil followed suit.

She gives talks at design colleges, in science museums, tries to motivate young women to find their own path and with her Pangolin Dress also keeps in mind people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and ADHS. She designed an artificial leg for bionic pop artist Viktoria Modesta, which has taken on iconic dimensions in her appearances in the latest Rolls Royce commercial. Still, for Anouk Wipprecht the collaboration between fashion and technology is still lacking. Two worlds that in her opinion will increasingly merge in future. The future might see clothing design that would simply require an upgrade. One would certainly be less inclined to throw out fashion that adapts to the wearer, she believes.

SMOKEDRESS - The Smoke Dress is one of four 3D printed pieces designed for her Electrified Volkswagen collection presented at the IAA in Frankfurt onSeptember 2013. The “Smoke Dress” automatically creates a veil of smokewhenever someone enters the personal space of the wearer, thuscamouflages itself within it’s own materiality.

© Photo Michiel Kivits.

ROBOTIC COUTURE (Exhibition 2017 in Enschede NL) 3D Printed Frontpiece: The heart in the front of the dress is 3D printed in transparent resin (Vero Clear) on an Objet Connex 500 printer.

© Photo Christina Bakuchava.

ROBOTIC COUTURE (Exhibition 2017 in Enschede NL) Agent Unicorn Horn: The research into understanding ADHD is in full development. Most of it requires tests that can be scary for kids, so there’s a clear need for amore playful approach. Together with ARS Electronica under an EUCommissioned project (Sparks.eu), Anouk developed these so-called AgentUnicorn Horns, which are worn on the head. The Horns use neurosensory(EEG) technology connected to a computer module. This tells a tiny videocamera when to record a person’s most memorable moments. How thatactually works is explained in-depth by IQ by Intel, or at theexhibition at Tetem of course.

© Photo Christina Bakuchava.

DRINKBOT DRESS: Make your own dress by buying the 3D printed parts in her Shapeways shop, or download the 3D files and print them yourself. The dresses wereoriginally created for Cirque Du Soleil’s restaurant HEART Ibiza. Theservers there wear Anouk’s robotic dresses while serving shots of ginand tonic.

© Photo Allan Amato

SMOKE DRESS. Earlier version of the Smoke Dress; equipped with sensors that emit more smoke, the more people are in the direct surrounding of the dress.

© Photo Robert Lunak

PROJECTION MAP DRESS. Projection Map Dress, based on AUDI’s Virtual Cockpit as part of Anouk‘s Audi A4 showcase in 2015 for Berlin Fashion Week

© Photo AUDI AG

How did it all begin?

I was fascinated with computers and robots ever since I was little. At the age of fourteen I started my formal education in fashion design. At the turn of the millennium the technology was still cumbersome, my ideas tended to come across as strange, then the chips became increasingly smaller and suddenly it was possible to put my ideas into effect. From the get-go it was my vision for clothing and their wearers to communicate with one another and their surroundings. Classical fashion bored me! [Laughs!] Aesthetics alone was not enough for me; I wanted to create intelligent clothing.

What were the first milestones?

Probably Pseudomorph fashion 2010. I had pneumatic control valves attached to the neck. These pumped ink into a series of absorbent layers of clothing thereby creating magical illusions. The beauty of something that is flowing or floating, breathing subtly, pulsating and alive like an organic creature had a way of capturing the observer’s imagination. I received phone calls from around half the globe, also from Hollywood.

And you answered your calling to the United States?

Exactly, it was in 2012 that I was invited to design a “lit-up luminous” dress for Fergie and the Black Eyed Peas performing the Halftime Show at the Superbowl. I was soon to realise that in Los Angeles it was easy to have even the craziest of ideas implemented. This had me move to California. But essentially as a cosmopolitan woman, I’m on the move all over the world [currently based in Miami].

How would you define yourself?

A mix of many things. Artist, designer, engineer, technologist, architect, scientist … I create many of my accessories myself using 3D printing methods. Very often my clothing will consist of prototypes turned research projects in part. Social space, for example, is interpreted very differently in the United States than in the Netherlands where people relate to one another at far closer proximity. With that said, my clothing that measures social interaction will react very differently in different circumstances.

And the projects always evolved?

Yes. Sensors and microprocessors display certain activities. Body sensors as implemented in the Heartbeat Dress together with Swarowski react to the heart beat. But I still went a step further. I wanted to create a learning system, which enhances the wearer’s self-awareness and self-knowledge, giving the person biofeedback. Within the framework of the SPARKS Residency at the Ars Electronica Future Lab in Linz [in Austria] – in collaboration with neuroscientists and experts – we developed a headset in the shape of a unicorn which captures the wearer’s observations via EEG. When the focus threshold of the wearer reaches 80% a film clip is activated in order to log the wearer’s point of attention. The aim was not to show what attracts attention, but instead what triggers it. Thanks to Ars’ cross-disciplinary approach we had access to an autism competencies centre and could incorporate important aspects into the concept from existing studies. The long-term goal would be to make it easier for debilitated children to communicate with their environment.

What has kept you the busiest?

That has to be the Pangolin Dress. The name is derived from the mammal with the same name that looks like an ant-eater but is covered in scales like the wired headgear that comes with the dress. The dress itself looks like an exoskeleton stretching from the shoulders over the hips all the way to the knees. It has 32 little motors attached to it that each control an LED light, which moves in a circle and lights up in different colours. The most difficult part was developed by the Johannes Keppler University Linz and the geotechnical engineering firm g.tec. As is the case with an EEG, the dress is fitted with some 1024 sensors – a brain-computer interface that measures brain waves! The dress then visualises the data from the signals. If you’re in a meditative state it will light up purple. In a neutral state it will light up blue. If you’re all over the place then the white LEDs will become illuminated and the little motors begin to move. In other words, the system visualises the information received from the brain in real time. You can learn to control the dress with your mind. Funnily enough Elon Musk presented his brain-computer interface at the same time together with Neurolink of which he is the founder.

Your biggest headaches & your biggest innovations?

The technology-enriched items of clothing don’t like water! [Laughs!] But now washing machine manufacturers are working on the problem and are already in the developmental stages. The other issue we have is with batteries that are not sufficiently capable of adapting to the flexibility of the body. To mitigate this, we’re experimenting with solar panels. From a general production point of view, a lot has however happened. Nowadays I can design a concept on the computer, it will then goes to a firm that can produce prototypes in a 3D procedure using SLS [Selective Laser Sintering). I program these with textile structures. Ideally with the Pangolin Dress, we want to be in a position to work with a wireless system. That is expected to open as yet untold doors in the future.

WWW.ANOUKWIPPRECHT.NL

FITTING PROCESS. Anouk and model © Photo AUDI AG

© Photo AUDI AG