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Little Slide Dress uses slides and Arduino to become a wearable tribute to the magic of film

Little Slide Dress uses slides and Arduino to become a wearable tribute to the magic of film

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A student at Victoria University of Wellington's School of Design has created the Little Slide Dress, a garment that uses Arduino, film slides, and a battery of LEDs to make a pulsating cinematic take on the classic black dress.

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Little Slide Dress
Little Slide Dress

We've seen open-source Arduino microcontrollers used to create everything from a steering wheel with haptic feedback to a replica of Battlestar Galactica's Mark VII Viper. With the Little Slide Dress, Arduino is being used in conjunction with film slides to make a mark on fashion as well. The work of Emily Steel, a student at Victoria University of Wellington's School of Design, the dress is made up of individual film slides backed with LEDs. An integrated light sensor connected to an Arduino Lilypad measures the amount of ambient light in the room, and dynamically adjusts the brightness of the LEDs based upon the location. Out in the sunlight, the dress is completely black, but in areas with subdued lighting, the dress glows, illuminating the various slides. When lit, the system even pulses various LEDs, turning the dress into a constantly-shifting array of images. Steel created the dress as a project for Victoria University's Wearable Technology program, and according to her Tumblr, was inspired by "classic movies and the ‘magic of film'."