Last March I had the pleasure of meeting Loretta Faveri, inventor of SOMO (SOund in MOtion) by SonicWear, a wearable device that turns the body into a musical instrument. When I last featured Loretta, SOMO was in prototyping stages - see the original feature here - and I was captivated. As a musician and dancer I am no stranger to both making music and moving to it, but SOMO presents a way to do both at the same time. And the SOMO story doesn’t stop at the device. Loretta and her team are producing a series of workshops that encourage people to experience SOMO firsthand and make music collaboratively. I was ecstatic when Loretta invited me to be part of her first round of SOMO workshop, which took place at Denise Mireau’s beautiful studio, The Studio For Movement, in downtown Toronto. Take a look at the video filmed that day (and check out my moves! haha).
I had a great time at the SOMO Workshop. What I love about the SOMO experience is the device lets you play around in an invisible landscape - since the notes it plays are determined by position, you really get the feeling that you’re exploring the realm of sound. What I really enjoyed about the workshop was the collaborative aspect of it. At first I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t play with the SOMO on my own for an extended period of time, but once we got into pairs and began making music together, it clicked for me that, like in dance and music, the combined product of multiple independent components is what creates the depth and beauty.
This SOMO workshop was an awesome experience, and I will certainly be signing up once it goes public! I encourage you to give it a try too - maybe I’ll even see you there. :)
You’ve seen fashion-tech, you’ve seen health-tech, but have you seen all three in one? SENSOREE‘s mood sweater - yes, you read that right! - began as a research project to make a wearable technology for people with ADHD and autism, conditions that are both heavily connected to emotional state. Unlike the heat-sensitive mood rings that had little girls in a frenzy, Sensoree uses “therapeutic bio media” to monitor the body and respond with visual and tactile states, creating an extension of the self and making the wearer’s mood a silent but powerful contributor to the conversation.
The GER: Mood Sweater has grown beyond its therapy roots into an interactive fashion project that projects the wearer’s mood to light up the room. For example, the pink glow of the collar in the image above means the model is “ruffled” - that is, excited or aroused. SENSOREE has assigned a range of colours to various moods as follows:
Here’s how it works: sensors located on the hands read excitement levels through the palms, and translates that data into a palette of colour values. The high, bowl-shaped collar contains LED lights that shine onto the body and through the fabric to create an ambiance of the wearer’s mood - or, as SENSOREE calls it, “Extimacy.”
SENSOREE’s concept of extimacy is a new form of bodily communication. Like facial expressions and silent gestures, extimacy conveys one person’s feelings to another in a way beyond words. This is why the Mood Sweater would benefit wearers with severe forms of autism, which may hinder their ability to convey the way they are feeling. With a mood sweater, friends and family can tell how the wearer is feeling and know without disturbing them whether or not they are open to company.
Though not yet available on the market, SENSOREE has opened up pre-ordering for a limited run of 100 mood sweaters, which will be custom-sized, signed, and numbered by SENSOREE. As it says on the pre-order page, this is bespoke design for the unique individual, where technology becomes personal.
Would you wear a mood sweater?
This is not a sponsored post. All images belong to SENSOREE.
“In the future, your watch will be able to give you directions, play you music, and show you your text messages without you ever having to touch your phone.” If you’d told me that seven years ago when I still had my old flip phone and iPod Nano, I would have thought these magical watches were decades away. But in the past two years the tech market has been flooded with smartwatches, and now a new announcement from Google I/O promises to change the smartwatch industry and bring to it a whole lot more accessibility, functionality and magic.
Android Wear, Google’s extension of Android OS for use on wearable devices, gives developers the ability to develop apps for wearables using an adaptation of the Android platform. Wearables running AW will benefit from notifications synced with other mobile devices, data transfer between wearables and handhelds, and voice actions that open up a wealth of possibilities for hands-free interaction.
In all the buzz around the release of Android Wear, the wearable that stands out of the crowd is Moto 360. Motorola’s smartwatch is the first watch using Android Wear with a round face, making it the first smartwatch to actually look the way we want it to while performing all the functions we dream of.
With the classic clean exterior of a wristwatch and a powerful Android brain, Moto 360 looks almost too perfect to be real, like a toy. Its large face spans rim to rim, except for a small piece on the bottom, which is where the drivers are housed. The beautiful default face simulates a classic, clean analog wristwatch, completely at home within the round shell. According to The Verge‘s report of the Moto 360, the watch’s round design was decided when executives asked children to draw a watch - they all drew round ones, and the shape was decided.
This beautiful watch is set to be released later this summer, and Android Wear APIs are currently available for developers to play around with. I can’t wait to get one and get building!
There are so many new things dropping daily in the tech world that it’s hard to keep up with them all! Releases fade in and out of the news, and with announcements like those made at WWDC and E3 these past weeks, the ever-approaching tomorrow is more and more tantalizing every day. Here are a few of the new/upcoming releases I am most excited about! And yes, you bet I’m excited about Apple’s Swift, but here are some lower profile releases you may not have heard about yet.
#1 - Sunset Overdrive
I love the Xbox One for all its high-tech, futuristic features, but there are simply not enough good games for it! After blasting through Ryse: Son of Rome and Assassin’s Creed, it feels like I’ve exhausted the realm of excellent third-person story games available to Xbox One owners. That’s why I’m absolutely buzzing with excitement for the release of Sunset Overdrive, Insomniac Games’ upcoming high-powered, post-apocalyptic, beautiful game! Sunset Overdrive takes place in a technicolour future (I know, I sound like a 1950s housewife on acid when I say that - no really, click the link), overrun with mutant humans. Join a faction in this “awesomepocalypse”, pick up a crazy hybrid weapon that fires bowling balls or mini helicopters, and fight off the hordes of energy drink-mutated nasties that are equally as zany as the weapons!
So. Excited.
#2 - Nymi
On a scale of 1 to 10, how much to you hate forgetting passwords? The Nymi band by Toronto-based biotech startup Bionym will make it so you never forget a password or even have to type one in again, by having your devices recognize you by your heartbeat. Like a fingerprint, everyone has a unique heartbeat, or electrocardiogram. The Nymi reads this and wirelessly verifies your identity with your laptop (or phone, or car, or whatever else you sync it with), and unlock them/log you in before you’re even prompted to enter your password. Hello, seamless world! I don’t know about you, but I’d guess I spend a solid ten minutes a day waiting for things to sign me in. That’s not a lot of time, but in this fast-paced world, every chunk of time is golden. And it’s not only this application that gets me excited about the Nymi, but all the possibilities this unlocks! Imagine the applications in workspace simplification! The best part is, you can sign up to be a developer and get the SDK to develop apps for the Nymi! SO MUCH YES.
#3 - Mink Makeup Printer
Yes, you read that correctly. Mink combines colour pigments and 3D printing technology to let you create your makeup in exactly the shades you want it. Using the in-app colour picker, you choose a colour either from a colour wheel or anywhere on your screen, like from a makeup tutorial video, for example. Then you choose what you want to print, insert the correct container, and print it! Something tells me Sephora is going to buy this company out and install them in all their stores.
How cool are these?? I’m so excited for these releases. You can pre-order Sunset Overdrive and the Nymi now, and the Mink is still under wraps. Soon!
Wearable tech is all the rage these days. Every month there’s a new smartwatch or fitband coming out to streamline the integration of technology in our everyday lives. But the focus thus far has been on functionality, with few devices emerging for entertainment and, to use a broad generalization, for “the arts.” That’s why I am so impressed by SoMo, Sonic Wear’s device that turns the human body into a moving musical instrument! Today, as part of the Keep Your WiTS About You interview series, we sit down with Loretta Faveri, creator of SoMo.
Textile artist-turned-inventor Loretta Faveri is the innovator behind the SoMo, which uses sensors and accelerometers to make music when the device is in motion. Inspired by her experiences in bellydancing, she decided to create the SoMo so dancers could make their own music while dancing instead of relying on a live band!
What is SoMo? It’s a custom built board that straps to your body that tracks your movement and outputs sound using Bluetooth and a computer with custom SoMo software. The SoMo allows for a lot of customization: using the software you can change the sounds that correspond to specific movements and changes, and using the different sensors you can customize your device system to be specific to your type of dance. For example, pressure sensors under the toe and heel can be switched out for wristlets if your dance uses more arm movement.
“Body movement is the visualization of sound,” Loretta says. “I want to turn all of your bodies into musical instruments.”
SoMo has evolved from a simple lilypad Arduino sewn into a dance costume into a custom designed board with movement tracking capability and its own software. Loretta and her designers are working hard to build a communication network so troupes can use multiple SoMos together to create a bigger sound in tandem. Plans for workshops and SoMo classes are set to launch later this year, where attendees can learn to dance with the SoMo. “I want people to say ‘I’m going to my SoMo class’ in the same way they would say ‘I’m going to my Zumba class’,” Loretta says. “I don’t want the focus to be just on the device itself but more on how you can use it to ignite your creativity in collaboration with others. This entry point allows people to experience the joy of making music together through body movement.”
I can’t wait to start SoMo classes! As a bellydancer and musician, I am captivated by SoMo and am itching to use it in a routine. I got a chance to try it out, what a cool experience! It’s interesting to note the learning curve as I moved with the SoMo wristlet – it was like getting used to an extension to my body, into a nonphysical realm. Every angle of my wrist and slight movement of my arm changed the sound in the room, and the silence synchronized with lack of movement was surprisingly difficult to manipulate. Once I got the hang of it though, I was able to create some really cool combinations of sound and motion.
The photo below shows dancer Denise Mireau wearing the SoMo ankle strap with heel and toe pressure sensors.
Loretta’s journey to running a wearable tech startup is inspiring, particularly because she fell into her career by accident! A dancer and textile artist, Loretta never intended to go into technology, but when she took her first wearable tech class at OCAD, she saw an opportunity and she took it, leading to the development of the SoMo. When asked what she thinks it would take to get more women interested in careers in technology, Loretta has a positive outlook. She agrees with Wendy Powley and thinks computer science should be mandatory in schools so they can feel familiar with it and learn those skills early. “If we want more women to pursue careers in new technologies, they have to feel comfortable with it from the get go, like in elementary school. I like to think of digital electronics and code writing as making magic, so if you can teach a young girl to make magic in a way that appeals to her, then she will likely want to make more.”
I. Love. That analogy. Coding is creation, turning words and symbols into anything you want them to be. That really is modern day magic. Functions are spells, programmers are wizards, and the compiler is the magic wand. “For me,” she says, “it was the fusion of art making and digital technology that inspired me to pursue my path and perhaps it would be the same for children. Combining the two can make technology a little more accessible and less intimidating and I think that is important for girls.”
Loretta has a lot of plans for the future of SoMo, including classes for all ages and walks of life. There are so many possibilities for SoMo to augment other industries, including healthcare, teaching and therapy. For now, the best way to get involved with SoMo is to follow on Twitter and like on Facebook, where Loretta posts updates, information and invites.
