Wearable forest: Smart fashion design to feel a belonging to nature

Japanese Zen Buddhism encourages deep meditation in order to achieve a sense of being one with nature. Singing birds, buzzing insects, sounds of leaves gently swaying, and the trickling sound of water in a beautiful forest are all integral to helping us feel at one with Nature. By distancing ourselves from the flurries of modern life and holding a reverent attitude toward Nature, we can start searching for a way to sustainability; coping with nature and our modern life. Wearable Forest is a functional dress which interacts bio-acoustically with a remote forest which is located to the uninhabited subtropical forest of the southern Ryukyu Islands, Japan. The clothing contains two paper-thin speakers embroidered on both front shoulders, 256 pieces of white colored LEDs (Light Emitting Diode) sewn with the conductive thread and sleeve-shaped textile sensors inside the fabric. An embedded CPU system receives the live soundscape data from the remote forest wirelessly; which quantizes the bio-acoustical activity of the wildlife from the data, and visualizes the result as glows through the array of the LEDs. In order to interact with the wildlife, users touch the textile sensor. This describes a new interactive wearable system that creates a sense of unity between users and a remote soundscape.