802.11 Apparel - Wifi Jacket

802.11 Apparel is a line of clothing that reflects wifi strength detected in the wearer's immediate environment. It is intended to literally "bring to light" a portion of the invisible radio waves that pervade our surroundings. In each garment, up to five stripes are illuminated in accordance with the wifi signal strength.

The first piece from this collection is the wifi jacket. While I was orignally working with basic light stripes, I ultimately decided to integrate them with a flower motif. This design choice was made to recount the age old story of borrowing from the environment to decorate garments - think floral and animal print patterns. Since Wi-Fi is so prevalent in the environment now, I thought it would be interesting to integrate this representation of a man-made part of our environment into a garment in that same way. In the end design, flowers referencing our natural environment are juxtaposed with technology from the synthetic environment.

Pieces are created using a hacked wifi detector, an Arduino microcontroller, LEDs and extended electronic components.

original sketches: