This article was taken from the January 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
What if building an electrical circuit was as easy as drawing a picture of one? You could grab a battery and an LED bulb, paint a wire between them, and ping! Your light would turn on. A group of students at London's Royal College of Art have made that possible.
Using electrically conductive carbon paint, they can draw a circuit on to fabric, paper, glass and even your own skin. "If you paint it on your body, you become a part of the circuit yourself," says Bibi Nelson, cofounder of Bare Conductive. "You can decorate yourself with small LEDs to make light-up body art, or touch things in the environment to trigger a sound or light."
In November 2009, the team used an early version of the non-toxic paint to create "Humanthesizer", an interactive music video for UK dance artist Calvin Harris, in which painted dancers could trigger different parts of the track with each movement. "The idea of the human circuit captured people's imaginations," says Nelson. "They all asked us, 'Can we draw it on anything?'"
Inspired by this, Nelson and fellow students Isabel Lizardi, Becky Pilditch and Matt Johnson launched Bare Conductive in September 2011 and began to sell "Bare Paint" online for people to experiment with (one 50ml pot costs £18). They now make educational classroom kits, bespoke greeting-card kits and customisable badge kits.
In the studio, Johnson shows how the paint can also be used to draw switches rigged up to control household electronics, and, when dabbed on, can turn any surface into a capacitive sensor -- "it's similar to an iPad touchscreen's sensitivity," he says.
Currently, they are working with a record company to make Bare Conductive concert posters. When you touch the painted posters on the street, they play music samples. "We're trying to show people a variety of futures," says Johnson. "We want them to reimagine the idea of electronics and electricity."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
