Temporary networks (ad-hoc wireless networks) are designed to be “visible” to devices only, not to people. Without consulting our devices, we can’t tell whether this minute we are participating in a network or not, and we are not asked whether we want to either.
Public Fashion Orchestra combines the conservative “wearable” network (e.g. networked wireless enabled mobiles) with an alternative, truly “wearable” and visible network.
The project envisions a fashion house which would sell intelligent clothes and their behaviours. All the clothes are networked with each other and when in range they can share designs and eventually other data; the fashion designer is able to feed new designs and behaviours into the system.

The clothes receive, transmit, transform and show the data, but they can also remember and limit it: once the clothes are “full”, they cannot participate in the network anymore unless you get rid of their data with the brush of a hand.
While dressing up, the wearer can activate the clothes. As soon as he/she encounters another fashion network member, communication between the two is triggered by an RFID-Tag embedded into their garments. Once communication is established, data is being transmitted by the devices carried by the users (e.g. wireless enabled mobiles).
Videos of the experiments and the scenario on the website.
By Alexandra Von Feldmann (with Stuart Wood).