x.pose: A Dress That Visualizes How Using a Smartphone Strips You Bare

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What if you could visualize how the data generated by your smartphone strips you bare?

x.pose is a garment created by Ms. Chen, a graduate student at New York University. Sheets that become transparent when voltage is applied are stretched inside flexible black frames produced with a 3D printer. Each frame corresponds to a geographic location. For example, when she is at New York University, the corresponding area flashes to show that data are being collected, then becomes transparent and exposes her skin [1].

Only part of the garment becomes transparent at any one time, but as those moments accumulate and are combined later, they reveal her completely naked self.

“By living in today’s hyperconnected society with almost no ability to control the creation of our digital data, how much of ourselves do we unknowingly expose? How accurately does the metadata collected and aggregated about me portray me as a person? Which aspects of my individuality are reflected in that portrait?” Ms. Chen writes on her project page. “x.pose is part of my exploration of these questions. I have already surrendered control of my data. I wanted to take the next step and make that fact visible to everyone.”

It is also interesting from a privacy-education perspective because it makes an abstract concept concrete.