Founded in 2004 in the USA, CuteCircuit is the world’s first wearable-technology fashion brand. A pioneer in this field, CuteCircuit interweaves leading edge fashion design with emerging technologies and smart fabrics to create fashion design that not only looks beautiful, but also features magical interactive capabilities. CuteCircuit’s co-founders, Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz, come from a heritage of couture in fashion design (Valentino), and Interaction Design and Anthropology respectively. After a decade and a half of innovation, the brand holds a number of patents in the field of wearable technology, such as 3D Spatial Audio, Haptics for Augmented Reality , Interactive Luminous Garments, Multimedia Wearable Telecommunication Devices, and Sensor Enhanced Fabric constructions.
CuteCircuit’s latest product is the SoundShirt. The SoundShirt brings media to life in a truly immersive way: it is a shirt that allows deaf and hearing audience members to experience music, esports, and AR enhanced by touch (haptic) sensations. During a live or virtual performance and gameplay the wearer physically experiences each musical passage, different instruments corresponding to locations on the garment; for example the violin along the arms. It brings media to life to be felt physically, live, in-realtime, on the body in a tactile language unique to each piece of music being performed, opening new and diverse ways of creating immersion in music, gaming, and experiences for all audiences.
The Soundshirt features 30 micro-actuators embedded in the fabric of the garment, these actuators receive wirelessly and in real-time the music/sound, transformed in data, that is captured on stage while the orchestra is playing or also remotely and in realtime during a videogame play. In this way the violins can be felt on the arms and the drums on the back creating a fully immersive feeling for a deaf audience member, and the steps of a Titan can be felt in all their power while playing a video game.
Essentially the entire soundscape comes to life as a language composed of a series of haptic (touch-like) sensations across the torso of the person wearing the shirt. The design of the shirt is comfortable and made of soft stretch fabric, there are no wires in the garment as it is built using the most advanced smart textiles and wearable techno
The SoundShirt truly allows multi-sensory experiences to be shared by everyone.
Ooredoo, Sony-Spotify, Microsoft, Lincoln