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In it, she shows a small, motorized 3D-printed replica of a familiar foodie rat affixed to a headband, pulling two small handfuls of her hair up and down in its paws as she slices up an onion in the kitchen. To test her version of Remy from “Ratatouille,” she gave the rodent yarn first so it wouldn’t yank her hair out. After seeing the reaction online, with nearly 45 million views to date across Instagram and TikTok, she took some commenters’ advice to upgrade him further.
“The first version I made just had his arms going up and down. I coded them to move randomly,” she explained. “And a bunch of people in my comments had a wonderful idea to sync it up to my movements, and I just happened to have (an) accelerometer laying around. It’s a pretty common circuitry piece, so I spent the weekend wiring it up.”
‘Magical’ technology
Ernst says she usually has multiple ambitious ideas ticking away in her mind, sometimes for months at a time. Her projects are not meant to represent the future of tech or fashion, though, as she emphasizes, but are instead a conversation-starter for young makers and designers to see technology presented in a different way.
“Technology really is magical to me… When I say I make robotic dresses, I never want it to look like how people picture it,” she said. “The wonder and the whimsy is very important to me. All of my designs really introduce that aspect to (engage) people who might not traditionally be interested in engineering.”
Though Ernst isn’t planning a more formal entry into fashion, robotics on the runway have led to some of the industry’s most memorable moments. In 1998, Alexander McQueen staged a frenetic moment of performance art when two robots spray-painted a dress worn by model Shalom Harlow. Two years ago, Coperni partnered with Boston Dynamics in Paris to send out the company’s robot canines to interact with models, including Lila Moss, to take off their coats and tote around handbags.
The wonder-evoking combination is one that Ernst discovered early on, through the first fashion project she made in college: a Bluetooth-controlled color-changing LED dress she created during a hackathon at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The number of girls who approached her exhibition booth asking for instructions on how to recreate the dress was a “lightbulb moment”, she explained, as she realized that fashion projects could be a gateway into STEM studies. In high school, she was a mathlete who loved reworking her clothes, but felt that when it came time to apply for universities, she had to choose between the two fields.
“A lot of people think that fashion is completely divorced from the sciences, but that is not true at all. The history of the computer is actually textile history,” Ernst said. The punch-card Jacquard loom, invented in the early 19th-century for weaving, is considered a precursor to modern computing because its use of binary code inspired early computer design. “That history is very interwoven.”
Embracing failure
In her own practice, Ernst combines a range of disciplines and techniques, from 3D modeling and laser cutting to hand dyeing and knitting, she explained. Because of that, she often prototypes her projects in simpler materials such as cardboard “before dropping into high-tech tools.”
Since college, Ernst has explored various ways to design curriculum for students. She received a small grant in 2017 for her hackathon project to create introductory circuit projects with art and fashion in mind and provide them online for free. She also provided educational kits to five public schools in Chicago from 2022 to 2023.
And this past year, she was a maker-in-residence at Chicago Public Library, teaching free classes at the Harold Washington Library branch while growing her online audience. There, she taught people from all walks of life, from young students to parents to retirees. In one case, a Girl Scout leader who attended and learned to program a motor said she would teach the new skills to her troop, Ernst recalled, and offer a new electronics badge that members could earn.
During her residency, Ernst created a new design for the library’s display window, a gold and blush Phoenix gown with feathers that rise and fall, activated by passersby who place their hands up to a panel on the window. The garment is a tribute to the Garden of the Phoenix, which was built in Jackson Park for the 1893 Chicago Fair as a symbol of US-Japanese friendship; the park was set on fire in the wake of World War II but was later reconstructed.
Though at first, Ernst had hoped to trigger the dress using motion sensors, then through viewers’ phones, she eventually (and quickly) had to rig up a more simple solution using light-sensitive photoresistors that activate when covered.
“So much of it is trial and error, and I think my computer engineering background and my software job really builds those skills of persistence, of debugging, of experimentation, and I’m able to bring that over into my experimental fashion, where I’ll often go through 6, 7, or 8 prototypes before I get close to something that works,” she said.
She’s learned that showing or explaining the unsuccessful versions of her projects to her followers have sometimes become just as interesting to them.
“I was surprised by how many people have commented that they like seeing the failures. They like seeing the prototypes that don’t work,” she said. “It helps them see that it is OK to fail and OK to iterate — nobody inherently knows how to do these things.”
The post Feats of fantasy: This software engineer codes self-twirling and illuminating gowns appeared first on CNN.
