There is a new trend
called "wearables", which means technology that is worn as clothes.
Some sensors can now be embedded into clothes and they monitor your heart rate
and skin conductance which relates to anxiety. Other wearables are buttons and
displays that are sewn into clothes, and will hopefully make cellphones
obsolete, i.e. everything will be in your clothes.
I want to suggest an
even more radical wearable, i.e. the conductive tattoo. Recently a new form of
designing electronic circuits has been introduced, namely, conductive ink. With
this contraption, you can simply draw a circuit and make it work. You can draw whatever circuit you wish, augmented with some
electronic devices, e.g. LED and batteries, and you simply have a working
circuit.
What will happen if you
make a conductive tattoo? Suddenly, your body acts as the circuit and you can
connect your wearables whichever way you like. You can close a circuit by
simply contorting your body, moving your hand, touching your ear, etc. More
elaborate circuits require more elaborate tattoos, but hey, after Prison Break,
that's probably very popular.
There are two main
concerns with this project. The first is the toxicity of the conductive tattoo.
While regular tattoo are also not that safe, putting in them conductive
materials is probably not that healthy. One should first come up with a
bio-compatible conductive ink. The second is the extra electronic that you
actually need to make the circuit run, e.g. batteries. However, these can be
worn on the body, e.g. wrist bands, and the rest of the tattoo closes the
circuit.
I agree that this idea doesn’t
make much efficiency-sense, but wouldn't it be cool to see a tattooed contortionist
make a body-electrical-display?
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