On social networks many of us already wear our proverbial hearts on our digital sleeves, but what if that translated back into a physical representation – something that augmented our interactions, notified us of nearby friends and activities or helped break the ice between secondary connections in real life?

A joint project of the MIT Fluid Interface Group and Tangible Media Group, this project attempts to bridge the gap between clothing and devices, utilizing our mobile machines in our pockets or hands to do the heavy computational and network lifting but displaying the results on shirts or other items of apparel.

Beyond that, though, there are elements of physical interaction – touching the activated cloth not only changes patterns but can also change relationships, letting you add ‘friends’ to your network just by making contact (or showing who your mutual friends may be via light-up text displays).

“If you think about it, our Facebook and Twitter profiles reach and even impact thousands of people every day, but it doesn’t feel like it,” Kan, representing the group, tells me. “But while the way we represent ourselves in social media is intangible, what we wear isn’t. We wanted to see if we could merge the two to create social catalysts.”

From FastCo: “For many, fashion is already something of a way of communicating to others that you’re part of a secret club. Social Textiles could take that concept to the next level, buzzing and flashing on the club floor when a like-minded club kid bumps into you. But the Social Textiles team also sees their invention being useful at more structured events like freshman meet-and-greets, company picnics, industry conferences, and so on. After all, meeting new people is hard enough. Why not let your clothes do some of the work for you?

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The next time you pick up an eco-friendly pair of shoes, you might actually be wearing the byproduct of the thriving pineapple industry. A new textile called Piñatex has the potential to push environmentally-harmful products like leather, vinyl, and even cotton out of the way. And, interestingly enough, it is made from the discarded leaves of pineapple trees.

Carmen Hijosa invented Piñatex while working in the leather industry. On a business trip to the Phillippines, she witnessed first-hand the toxic effect the industry had on the environment and on its workers. On the same trip, however, she was struck by a brilliant idea: the ridiculously abundant natural fibers in the Phillippines could be used as a harmless and versatile substitute. After years of research and development, Hijosa founded the company Ananas Anam and patented her invention.

Once the fruit is harvested from the pineapple tree, the tree is left to rot. Hijosa developed a method in which the otherwise-wasted leaves from those trees are harvested, degummed, and put through a process that turns them into a non-woven textile comparable to felt or leather. The Piñatex can then be stamped to resemble other materials such as metallic vinyl, leather, or snakeskin.

The most exciting aspect of Piñatex is that it is completely sustainable and uses no more water than it takes to grow the plants, which are already being grown for the food industry. Even cotton, long considered an eco-friendly textile, uses an alarming amount of water in its production. Piñatex is currently being tested in real-world applications such as clothing and upholstery, and it has the potential to become an incredibly versatile, Earth-friendly alternative to traditional textiles.

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With so many mundane items suddenly taking on digital life, it stands to reason that even textiles will eventually be digital in some form or another. Budapest-based textile artist Judit Eszter Karpati recently designed a fabric called Chromosonic which changes color when exposed to heat and sound.

Chromosonic is a programmable electronic textile that reacts to heat using the open-source Arduino platform. Karpati first covered the fabric in silkscreen and then colored it with a heat-sensitive dye. The next step was weaving wires into the fabric and connecting them so that when music is played, the wires heat up and create color-shifting patterns.

Karpati’s inspiration came from her desire to meld the physical and the digital. Her textile creation could, if adopted by the fashion industry, create some amazing new options for designers. The idea of integrating technology into clothing doesn’t stop with Karpati’s color-changing fabric, however. It is a positive step toward next-generation wearables in which we can combine clothing and electronic devices like phones, watches, and music players, which is an idea that some other designers have already expressed interest in developing.

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There isn’t a material much more effective for channeling and releasing extra moisture than human skin, but a team of researchers at the University of California, Davis are developing a material inspired by that gold standard. The waterproof fabric has channels that pull moisture away from where it shouldn’t be (presumably your skin) and drains it away on the outside – even when the channels are completely saturated already. This new type of moisture-wicking material could be the next big thing in workout gear.

The team used hydrophilic (water-attracting) threads into fabric made from a hydrophobic (water-repelling) material. The material could be produced with existing textile manufacturing technology so clothing manufacturers could begin producing it easily. By adjusting the patterns of the hydrophilic threads, the team can control where sweat from the body is directed and where it is released from the clothing.

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Imagine for a moment that you’re a thief bent on stealing something really valuable – is a piece of cloth really going to seem like a dangerous barrier? It might be just that once the smart fabric developed at Berlin’s Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM makes its way into real-world settings. The fabric is made of regular fibers on regular weaving equipment, but it has a couple of key differences. First, there is a network of silver-coated conductive threads running through the fabric and connected to a microcontroller. Secondly, this bad-ass fabric can tell you if it’s been cut – and precisely where the cut is.

The advance in secure textiles could be used in a very wide number of settings. It could be built into the walls of banks or museums, or used to cover valuable loads in trucks. The electric current passing through the fabric is so weak that it would not harm humans or animals near it (or even cutting through it), but it is just strong enough to sense a disruption in the energy. As long as the fabric measures at least one meter square, it can be scaled to any size – and it only costs about as much as a regular piece of fabric of the same size. Even repeated washing, extreme temperatures and high humidity can’t dampen the usefulness of the researchers’ futuristic new fabric.

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