We’re still waiting to slap our wrist with Apple’s first wearable, but MIT Media Lab professor Neri Oxman has taken the wearables movement to a freaky new level by designing a new line of wearable structures that “grow” organically.
The project was a collaboration with the Mediated Matter Group and created four grown and 3-D-printed dresses that look like freakishly large organs growing outside the wearer’s body. To create the shape of the wearables, the team used a computational growth process inspired by natural growth behaviors. Each item starts as just a seed and then expands and refines its shape.
Take a look at these hypnotic growth variations MIT created:
Oxman printed the wearables using an Objet500 Connex3 multi-material 3-D production system. It’s the first time volumetric color and transparency gradients have been achieved in 3-D printing, but Oxman’s ambitions are far greater than just some crazy-looking wearables.
Ultimately the hope is to embed living matter within 3-D structures that augment the environment. Each little tube could hold life-sustaining elements, allowing living matter to be transformed into oxygen for breathing, biomass to eat, or photons for seeing.
To take a deeper look at the incredible process that went into Oxman’s other-worldly designs, check out the full gallery here.
Via: MakeZine
