Musethereal

Technical Information

Brain-mapped Chest Emblem (“Cell Body”)
This is the real meat and potatoes of the dress. Data collected from 13 of the sensors on the Emotiv EPOC+ EEG headset is collected and processed via a special app on a Nexus android phone. The app calculates the power of 5 frequency bands at each sensor (ie each location on the brain). The frequency bands collected are Theta (4-7 Hz), Alpha (7-14 Hz), Low Beta (15 – 27 Hz), High Beta (28 – 40 Hz), and Gamma (40-100 Hz). The app determines which frequency band is dominant at any given time for each sensor and determines which colour the corresponding LED light should be based on the following colour code:

Dominant Frequency Band:
Theta = Purple
Alpha = Blue
Low Beta – Green
High Beta = Yellow
Gamma = Red

This information is then pushed to the Teensy 3.2, which is used to control the fade between colours for each sensor/LED light pairing.

The LED lights are housed within special 3D printed light diffusers that have been printed directly into the fabric of the dress. The LED lights are brain-mapped, such that the LED lights in the top half of the chest emblem are linked to the frontal and temporal cortex sensors, while the LED lights in the bottom half of the emblem are linked to the parietal and occipital cortex sensors. So it is literally like you are looking directly at the human brain.

Chasing LED Lights on Arms (“Dendrites”)
Since the design of the dress is inspired by the Neuron, the LED light strands on the arms are meant to represent electrical impulses coming into the Cell Body. To accomplish this, we used an accelerometer paired with an Arduino Trinket for each arm and used the directional data (X,Y,Z axis) to trigger the chasing sequence of the LED lights strands. Each arm had 3 LED light strands, with each being linked to a particular axis of movement (X, Y or Z). Therefore, when the arms are moved in various directions, light shoots up the arms and into Cell Body of the dress.

Chase and Burst LED Lights on Skirt (“Synapses”)
The skirt of the dress represents the synapses and connections to other cells in the neural network. Four strands of LED lights are controlled by an Arduino Trinket to run a chasing sequence down each strand and then complete a bursting action as it reaches the next cell formation.