About This Project:The Brain Dress was a collaboration between Marlene Behrmann Cohen and Sophie Hood. We created a custom dress for Marlene's induction into the National Academy of Science this past month. The Brain Dress featured custom print fabric, a fully original design, a custom made and fit dress with integrated LEDs that light up in response to sound via a microphone and Arduino Lilypad micro controller.
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Who We Are |
Marlene Behrmann Cohen is a scientist with a longstanding interest in making clothes and in fashion. Her research is concerned with understanding the complexity of human behavior and the brain mechanisms that support this behavior. The experiments she conducts involve measuring signals when humans receive and process sensory input (vision and audition) and she has skill in data collection, storage and interpretation. Developing clothing with technology potential for measuring and recording signals and for responding to the state of the individual is a natural application of her research interests into the domain of wearable technology.
Sophie Hood is a costume maker and teacher: Exploring the connections between theater arts, technology, and the fine arts, she is specifically interested in integrating technologies such as arduino, as well as eco friendly/reuse materials into costumes and clothing in order to create interactive, artistic garments that in turn help more effectively tell stories. With an undergraduate degree in sculpture from Dartmouth College, and an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in costume production, she is working to take these skills, and while working collaboratively with designers, create functional, well made, and innovative costumes while still drawing upon and learning from traditional techniques. The relationships between the theater world, the fine arts world, and new technologies are ever growing and she is interested in exploring them. |