doesn't this sound cool?

Do you know what this dress is made of? It's made of reclaimed audio tape. And, even cooler, it's playable. You can hold tape heads in your hands and run them over the dress, and noise will come out! This is so cool the temperature in the room when I read about it dropped eight degrees. (Many thanks to Ursula for the link!)

Now, I'm not suggesting you actually wear a sonic fabric dress for longer than it takes to mess around with playing it -- I'd bet it's pretty hot, and the silhouette is not one that I would choose. But as an art object? It's wonderful. I would get one just to hang on the wall, or keep on a dress form.

In fact, I actually have a dress on a dress form in my living room -- not a sonic one; a great 1940s beaded taffeta sweetheart-neckline full-skirted dress, and it was one of the first pieces of vintage clothing I ever bought. The woman who sold it to me looked like Morticia Addams, never wore shoes, chain-smoked menthols in this giant abandoned garage full of random items (all of which were flammable in degrees ranging from 'three-acre brush fire' to 'towering inferno'), and kept a roll of bills in her cleavage. I always tried to have exact change. But, that burst of quasi-nostalgia/horror aside, I like the idea of dresses as art and this one is art in two dimensions, as it were. It's art and music. Next step: a dress that is art, music, and moves by itself -- dance! Oh, wait, I'm thinking about robots again. Dammit.

Click on the image for more information about sonic fabric. They have messenger bags and suchlike, too.