Boundless

Kay Wasil

Advisor: Theo Ellin Ballew

Boundless is an exploration of PCB boards and LEDs as decorative, wearable art, and seeks to highlight the form factors of various electrical components rather than trying to embed or hide them behind other materials.

Project Website Presentation
Three models in colorful lighting wearing various jewlery and dresses covered in LEDs and copper

Abstract

Boundless is an ongoing work combining high fashion aesthetics with hardware and wearable technology. The goal of this project is to create wearable, programmable circuit boards that also have a strong aesthetic sense, and utilize jewelry-making and craft techniques to solve electrical engineering problems. This series includes a chainmail-style dress made out of PCBs, an LED pulsing PCB necklace, and a piece that accesses data via wifi to display the moon's current phase through LEDs.

Closeup of a circular copper circuit board, covered in lit purple leds, with five smaller moon-shaped boards arranged around it

Technical Details

Software Used
Autodesk Fusion
Bantam Othermill driver
Arduino IDE
Adafruit LED Backpack Library

Equipment Used
Soldering iron
Bantam Othermill
Pliers
Wire strippers
Tweezers
Manual pick and place machine
Surface mount solder
Heat gun
Hot plate

Dress materials:
250 PCB boards
10 yds nonconductive chain
60ft clear speaker wire
single-sided copper-clad boards
Arduino uno
2x HT16K33 led matrix driver backpacks
7v lipo battery

Wired and programmed primarily through following adafruit's guide for the HT16K33 use - https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-led-backpack/downloads

Moon Board Materials:
Leather
Rivets
Nonconductive chain links
Clear speaker wire
Single-sided copper-clad board
57 .01 uf capacitors
1000 uf capacitor
56 neopixels
ESP 8266 Module
5v voltage regulator


Star board materials:
Single sided copper clad board
ATTiny 85
Clear speaker wire
Gold chain
Lobster clasps
Jump rings
48 blue surface mount LEDS
48 470 ohm resistors
10k ohm resistor
.01 uf capacitor
1000 uf capacitor
NPN Transistor

Schematics can be found here: https://kayitp.wordpress.com/2024/05/01/technical-details-for-boundless/

A model backlit in a hazy room, looking directly at the camera, wearing a necklace of lit blue LEDs on circuit boards shaped like stars

Research/Context

This project began as me exploring a method for creating a wearable LED grid through linking rigid backing together using jewelry-making techniques (as opposed to mounting the LEDs on a flexible piece of plastic or fabric, which is the method used by most readily-available flexible LED grids). This was initially inspired by a dress created by the designer Guo Pei created entirely out of a mesh of rhinestones linked together with jewelry backing. It occurred to me that this was a technique that could work quite well with LEDs and started my work from there.
I explored a few methods of backing the LEDs to link them together (3D printing and laser-cutting), and eventually settled on creating PCBs to do so. This allowed me a high level of precision with shape, the ability to embed electrical traces for the LEDs directly into the backing material, and the benefit of the raw copper finish of DIY PCBs being an added aesthetic touch to the work that I really came to appreciate. After several rounds of tests, I settled on a design for the PCBs that functioned for what I needed (support, aesthetic, and assembly) and built a 8x8 grid prototype with hand milled PCBs. The prototype was very successful for the most part, with the biggest hurdle to overcome being determining the connection type and type of material that would give me the best combination of strength, aesthetic, and ease of assembly.
I tested several options for connections moving forward, including using the chains themselves to conduct current, and using conductive thread insulated by beads and settled on clear speaker wire for its combination of durability and aesthetic.

three copper circuit boards shaped like stars, covered in lit blue LEDs

Further Reading

Inspiration and essential resources:
Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy
Guo Pei: Couture Beyond
Glitch Feminism - Legacy Russel
Traintrakr - https://www.traintrackr.io/product/mta2
Paco Rabanne's 12 unwearable dresses - https://fashion.rabanne.com/en-us/pages/the-12-unwearable-dresses
Alexander McQueen's led collection for Givenchy in 1995
Brian Oakes' PCB sculptures - http://www.brianoakes.xyz/
Homemade Hardware PCB creation guides - http://homemadehardware.com/
Great tutorial for basic LED grids - https://www.circuitspecialists.com/blog/build-8x8-led-matrix/
Kobakant soft/hard connections - https://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=1272
Kobakant beaded conductive thread - https://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=7041
Fantastic tutorial on accessing API data through an ESP8266 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUjFMVOpXBM
Arduino JSON assistant - https://arduinojson.org/v7/assistant/#/step1

  • A model with long dark hair wears a sparkly gold dress covered in lit LEDs