 From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Samsung Developer Conference 2017. Brought to you by Samsung. Hello everyone, welcome to day two coverage of the Samsung Developer Conference, or SDC 2017. I'm John Furrier, cohost of theCUBE, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. I'm here with Anuk Wiprek. Hard to say last name, but I have a hard time with my Rs as East Coast thing. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you so much. So I'm super excited to chat with you because you're doing some really innovative things around fashion tech, which we think is going to be at the cusp of a whole new revolution of fashion, embedding tech. Before we get started, I have some pointed questions, so to speak. Talk about what you're working on. People might not know some of your dresses. The spider dress has been famous. Talk about your work, and then we'll jump into it. Yeah, I do, and yeah, I work as my own self, sort of, on fashion and technology, so the combination of fashion and technology. So, yeah, some of my dresses they are bleeding in. They are surfing cocktail shots. They are attacking, really, with mechanic spider legs on the shoulders. They are exploding in a layer of smoke, sort of. So I do a lot with animatronics and robotics, and what I want to do is that fashion is augmenting us, sort of, you know, so creating an interaction. So you're designing dresses in a way that's integrating new elements with some tech, robotic arms. The spider dress is one that kind of retracts and has some coolness to it, but there's also the smoke dress. What are the, how many dresses have you designed? Give us the taste of the flavors and the reactions. Yeah, so I have in total 37 dresses, so it's a really big family, and the family starts to expand more and more, and yeah, for me, it's a lot about expression and about investigating how, if you place these pieces of technology on the body, what they can do, sort of, you know, so seeing fashion as an interface, because I always say, garments are there to shelter us, you know, to keep us comfortable in a way, and for me, fashion is something different. For me, fashion is about expression and about communication, you know, and for me, this fashion is analog, like our garments are analog, they're not digital, they're not interactive, you know? So I want to put like computer boards, like microcontrollers and everything, and sensors and everything, so they start to come alive and they can really express us, you know, and by that, really interesting things come because do you want to be always expressed, or do you always want to emote yourself, or how does that go, sort of, you know, I think that is, for me, my biggest fascination, like researching these fields. Yeah, and here at the Samsung Developer Conference, so obviously front and center, on the keynotes you're hearing, you're seeing your work and other things displayed, they're calling it smart things. Clothes can be smart, and you're kind of going down that road, obviously robotics is a first step, because you can, that's cool tech, but digital displays are coming, right? I imagine like my top tweed on my shirt, or you know, or my Facebook post with my friends, using the data. How are you thinking about this as a designer? I mean, most people will think geeky, okay, I got the data and database, but as an artist, as a designer. Myself, I do this for about 12 to 15 years, so I started in the beginning of 2000, really trying to see how fashion can become this interface, and I think like by me growing into this, like technology got smaller and smaller, and it got closer to the body in a way, right? So it was able to embed in your garments, and I think that just opens up like so many interesting possibilities that hasn't been explored yet, except for only like the Fitbits and the watches, you know, the smart watches that are more bothering us, like you know, but they don't do anything with like data visualization, they don't do anything to visualize this data, it's only basically in the screen, and I want to get it out of the screen and into the real life sort of, you know. So one of the most popular dresses that I've noticed on Twitter and on Google search was the spider dress. That's like mechanical arms, it's got like spider legs that comes out, this cool, cool experience. Also you have the smoke dress, that talk about what they do differently. I mean, talk about the spider dress, the smoke dress, and what was the one with the heartbeat? Share with some of what the dress is personified. Yeah, so the spider dress I created, or had a pleasure to create with the semiconductor company Intel, and this dress is really about personal space, there's proximity sensors under the chin, so they are measuring, so they're measuring when people come into the personal space, and when people do, there's mechanic legs on the shoulders, and they are basically attacking, but then not just in one way, it would be boring sort of, you know, so depending on how you walk into the space and where you're standing, it's reacting differently. So somebody's walking up to you very fast, and your dress is reacting very fast sort of, you know. It's like a spider sense, and you can feel kind of an expression, whoa, stay back, or you ready to engage. You can use this piece of technology which is hosted on your body in order to do something that we might not do, like defend yourself, and animal, if you come in the closeness of a cat, the cat would give you a claw, right? But we would say like, oh, we would choose to maybe feel uncomfortable, you know, this way. So I was thinking if you have a system on the body that can do that for you, well that's technology helping you out, right? Yeah, certainly if someone gets too close, uncomfortable, a little shock treatment might help keep people away, or that's a fun example, but I think this is kind of revolutionary in my opinion. It's like, this is so kind of cool because you got technology, you got expression, you got human interaction, all these things going on. Talk about the smoke dress, what is that about? Yeah, to just point out, I think one, like working with this, one of the main factors that I think is really interesting is that a technology doesn't become a tool, it becomes a companion, it lives on your body, it lives with you, and it can maybe also listen to your body signals, and it knows how you're doing, and that is sometimes not with handheld devices. They don't know how you feel, but as soon as it's on the body, it feels your heart, it can sense your brain, it can sense your pills, your muscle contraction, and I think that makes it really interesting, these new technologies on the body, they can really listen to us. And they're coming faster too, you're seeing here, Samsung Health is the first step, obviously that's the sensors on the body, it's an internet of things device, and the phone is just in a companion, but also I would just say that we had some guests yesterday, some influencers, on validating that augmented reality is so much more advanced, this points to what you're doing, it's not necessarily virtual, it's just augmenting what the human's doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, smoke dress, and what's that other dress that does the heart? Yeah, smoke dress basically also based on sensors, the more people are around in the surroundings, the more smoke it gave, so almost the feeling of diving away, like shyness, you know? So working with different emotions, I also created a series of dresses for Cirque du Soleil, which we know as the theater, they have a restaurant in Ibiza, and I created dresses that make cocktails, so a little push on the button, and then a peristaltic pump in the back, and it serves a little cocktail shot, and they are giving that. So looking at how these designs also can be social, for example, how can they be personal, how can they be intimate, you know? And I think that is the most interesting thing to look at that way while designing. Yeah, it's going to be pretty interesting, people can take these into different social situations. Parties, or large crowds, a spider could be good for that. Yeah, but also how can it help you, how can it help your shyness, how can it help you proceed in the world, how can it engage you, you know? I think a lot of these things we don't understand yet, how technology can be this learning system, you know? How can we work with technology like hand-in-hand that way as well? So how did you get into all this? This is so cool, how did you? I started with fashion design myself, I was 14 years old, and again, the notion of these dresses, expressive, communicative, but they were analog. So when I was 17 years old, I combined it with another love of mine, which is robots, like I love robots, they're like amazing, but I didn't want the robot to stand next to me, be modeled as after human, I wanted to place the robot on my body, or on the body, and be reacting and interacting like an animal, you know, more intuitive, much more expressive, or maybe rebellious, you know? And by that, it's opening up, like a broad scale of possibilities, what you can do according to that, and how they can be interesting, you know? Yeah, and I think this is going to be one of those fashion tech areas. What's the industry like right now on the fashion tech for the folks that aren't following fashion tech? Where is the state of the industry? I mean, this is cutting edge you're doing, certainly. We love it. Where is the industry? Correct, like especially like the things that I'm doing are a little bit more about extremities, right? Really provoking this notion on what fashion can be as soon as it becomes interactive, but especially the last like five years, the technology industry, again, I'm doing this for, yeah, longer than 12 years. The last five years, really the technology industry is really interested in it. The last two to three years, the fashion industry starts to like, hey, look at it, but I think like technology and fashion need to go much more talking to each other in order to really make this field grow, and all of that, you know? And that is where we come in, the creators and the creatives, you know? We are the instigators of the ones that try to push these boundaries and try to bridge these gaps in little bits in order to make a melting pot regarding to that. Well, you're doing a great job. I'm super impressed. It's super inspiring to me. I mean, I'm just intrigued by the whole thing. I got to get your reaction to how the younger generation is responding. I mean, I have two daughters and two sons, but my daughters would probably be into this. What's the younger? I mean, the younger people must be like loving this. Old people, oh, get off my lawn, you know? It's just too crazy, but maybe the younger people might like it better. What's the reaction? Yeah, first of all, I do a lot with like animals, children love animals, you know? I do myself a lot at a maker fair, for example. The maker scene, I'm always say, I build school stuff, you know, but also see how a new generation can learn from that. So most of my designs are open source. I do a lot of lectures at maker spaces, workshops with children, kids and electronics, but also girls in programming, just to see how that goes. And really playful way, you know, or looking at certain topics, software botics, or like these things, you know? So really also trying to engage that. And I think, yeah, children growing up, they love this, you know? Because there's so many things in the screen. And as soon as that becomes physical, they really have an engagement with that, you know? So the maker culture is really growing. Certainly it's been one of those awesome phenomenons that we're seeing. Kind of like open source decades ago. The creator culture, the maker culture, the builder culture, this is a real deal. When you've got consumer devices as good as, you know, Samsung 8 here happening. You have smart TV. So how are you making that open? Just take a little one minute to describe for the folks out there who might be interested in getting involved. Is there any collaboration with universities? Is it fashion institutes? Is it on the web? Is it your own community share? Some information. Yeah, one really big fan I am of open source. So basically open sourcing, like sharing what you have, you know? You can do that online at websites. You can put your codes online, you know, such things. I think by sharing, you can find all my website. Now there's like websites as, for example, GitHub. If you have pieces of code, you put it on there, you know? And free for the community to use. It's a lot about community, sort of, you know? If I would make something, I can publish online, really step by step how to do it. Where to catch the 3D printed model, where to get the code and people can make an electronic ring, for example, you know? And by seeing what kind of piece you can give away from your process, somebody else can learn from that, you know? And build on top of it. Yeah, correct. So I grew up with, for example, Arduino. It's an open source platform board. And it's a microcontroller board that you can program. And it's open source, sort of, free for people to just work with. And it's really a big education, like, yeah, part in there, you know? Like, education can be expensive. So how can we open this up? How can we make it accessible? And I think that is really, really important to do, sort of. And this is great because this could democratize the closed fashion industry. Open up new design opportunities from anyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and also a company. You know, you don't have to open source all, but what is that little piece that you can open source, that you can give away, that you can give to the community or to developers or people to play with? So the cube team can build some cube clothes? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lenny's like, hey, you want that? Okay, so I got to ask on the community side, love this vision, because this is kind of an open source model. You're building on the shoulders of others. You're one of the pioneers. What do you see as critical things that need to happen to continue the accelerated growth or more momentum? What would you wish to see? Can you give an example? Like what needs to happen to continue the momentum? More people participating, more designs, I think more contributions from donors, more academic. I think what happens now, for example, like something developer conference, I'm part of the creative track, sort of me and also Stanley, who gave a keynote this morning. And I think like inviting more people into each other's disciplines, you know, Samsung here is inviting the creatives into the track, you know, how can the fashion industry invite technology in there, the technology industry invite fashion and all of these stuff, you know. So you can really get this melting pot of creative, the architects, the designers, the engineers and all of that together, you know. I think that is a wonderful world that I love sort of and that I see much more happening. The instigation of those, like yeah, those different disciplines together. I love how you have the robotics love as a kid and you brought your fashion love together, two disciplines, two amazing things. Advice for young girls out there today who are, you know, maybe feeling that, you know, it's a male dominated world or who might have our interest to robotics. Robotics clubs are hot right now. I mean, go to all the elementary schools and high schools in America. You're seeing robotics become a big deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's your advice for young girls out there who want to develop their passions? One thing is always follow your dream. If you want to have something, if you have something in mind, hey, I want to build an octopus dress, you know, and it might be too far away. Like how can you get there, you know, set your goal and go towards there, find it out, you know, be curious, like see how you can build these things. And especially if people would say no, you go there to prove them wrong, you know. So that is something that I learned. Don't take no for an answer. Always follow your passion. My ideas are very far out, you know, very far. So I always got like, oh, this and that, you know, and I always said no. And, you know, it's always about following your passion. If there's something that is really steering you, you know, go find it because that is in the end what is driving you, you know. It is not the money. It's not anything of that. It is your passion and something that you want to fight for. Find that it's to scratch, always go after what you want. Okay, so final question for you is in your experience with your cutting edge designs and all the work you're doing, which is phenomenal, how have you observed the user experience of the general world these days? Because certainly mobile's out there, we see mobile. But as you start to push the boundaries in clothing that's an expression, it's a human thing, the user experience is becoming integrated. The fabric. What have you learned and observed about user's expectations for future user interfaces? Yeah, I think haptic feedback is really interesting. Sort of also as soon as you have garments with things in there, you know, the feedback that you can get from that notifications or you can think of different ways regarding to that, you know. Like really the way we interface now with the screen, how can that be more embodied? An embodied experience, for example, is very interesting. But also how can that embodied experience become an epidermis which goes into your house? How can your living accessories react to you or your moods or emotions? I think like moods and emotions are a really interesting topic which also can be much more explored regarding to interaction design and user experience design. It's interesting how I'm also visualizing coolness around an automatic QR code that could, say how I'm feeling. Stay away from me today, QR code, you know. And then people still need to scan you. People have an automatic scanner on there when they're a little Samsung scanner with a facial recognition. No, this is pretty cool, so. But these garments are QR codes but they're surrounding the body. They're not like they have a broader, yeah, bandwidth to broadcast, right? Sort of. The personal network is coming. Your personal clothing network, subnet, thank you very much for coming on. Really appreciate it. You're doing some really amazing work and the creative boundaries you're pushing. It's really phenomenal. We're going to share the links or all your stuff with our audience. And great to see Intel helping you out and getting that spider design going. Intel's always doing cutting edge work. So, can you see that? Yeah, they're awesome. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. Good luck with all your endeavors. Appreciate it. This is theCUBE here. Breaking down the fashion tech at the edge of the network. That's the new edge. Is your clothes? Be ready for disruption. 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