Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Electro-Cosmetics Let You Input With Your Face
Conductive makeup - or "Electro-Cosmetics" - allows Katia Vega to control a variety of electromechanical devices, using only her face as an input device.
(Electro-Cosmetics video)
Demonstrated on 10 October at the Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces conference at the University of St Andrews, UK, the aim of her "beauty technology" is to provide an alternative way to make quick micro-interactions – like those possible with wearable computers like Google Glass.Smartphone users have to fiddle with their phones for half a minute to take a picture, whereas Glass only requires a quick tap on the side to accomplish the same task.. With Vega's "Blinklifier" it could be done with a wink. "We use voluntary movements to amplify intentions – using our body as a new input device," she says.Vega, a computer scientist at the Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has developed metallised false eyelashes and conducting eyeshadow that complete a very low voltage circuit when she winks. Both are said to be chemically safe for use on the skin.
Fans of Neal Stephenson's 1995 novel The Diamond Age may recall the Jodie grid that used an implanted (or tattooed) grid of nanosites to help a machine match up a person's face with a dynamic graphic image.
Miranda was looking at a black wall speckled with twenty or thirty thousand individual pinpricks of white light. Taken together, they formed a sort of three-dimensional constellation of Miranda, moving as she moved. Each point of light marked one of the 'sites that had been poked into her skin by the tat machine during those sixteen hours. Not shown were the filaments that tied them all together into a network - a new bodily system overlaid and interlaced with the nervous, lymph and vascular systems..."It's a Jodie," she said...
"Looks like we got ourselves an artiste here," Fred Epidermis said. "lemme try you in one of our most challenging roles."
Suddenly a blond, blue-eyed woman was standing in the mediatron, perfectly aping Miranda's posture, wearing big hair, a white sweater with a big letter F in the middle, and a preposterously short skirt...
...for the first time ever, she was watching another person move exactly as she moved, as the stage mapped Miranda's grid onto this imaginary body. Miranda pressed her lips together as if she'd just put on lipstick, and Spirit did the same. She winked and Spirit winked...
Via NewScientist; also, be sure to check out the 32 other amazing inventions from The Diamond Age. Thanks also to Vik of Diamond Age Solutions for suggesting this story.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/12/2013)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Input Devices ")
Electro-Cosmetics Let You Input With Your Face
Hi, I'm Katia. I'm a superhero.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
AI Operates An Excavator
'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'
US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
