x.pose

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X.POSE

In the digital realm, we are naked and vulnerable. x.pose is a wearable data-driven sculpture that changes opacity to expose a person's skin as a real-time reflection of the data that the wearer is producing.

x.pose is an exploration and commentary on the current internet culture of our generation and the relationship we share with our data. Individuals carrying smartphones and connecting with services such as Google or Facebook have agreed, often without conscious consideration, to policies that grant these service providers explicit rights to harvest and utilize personal data on a massive scale. Based on account activity logs, Google clearly knows where their users are, have been, and possibly even where they're going. Google can most definitely paint a clear portrait of any of their users.

We have already ceded control of our digital data emissions, x.pose goes a step further to broadcast the wearer's data for anyone and everyone to see.

A server and mobile app were built to collect Xuedi, the designer's geolocation data over time to use as the basis for a personalized 3D printed flexible mesh. Using arduino and bluetooth, the app communicates with a layer of reactive displays that reflects the trails of information that she produces.

These displays are divided up into patches that represent neighborhoods and change in opacity depending on the wearer's current location. If she is in the NYU neighborhood, that area will be the most active, pulsing, revealing her current location, revealing the fact that her data is being collected and at the same time exposing her skin. As her data emissions are collected, the more transparent and exposed she will become.

Production | Making Of
The foundation behind x.pose is the mobile app and server that automatically collect data from the wearer. They are built using Node.js and PhoneGap. The recorded data set is then fed into processing to produce the pattern and exported to Rhino to make the 3D mesh. Lots of experimentation was done at this stage to find the perfect material that would be both flexible and durable.

The final step to putting it all together was to provide real-time data transmission through bluetooth to an Arduino, which controls 20 hand-cut, individually addressable, reactive displays that change in opacity to reveal the wearer’s skin.