That is, if you want to light up E3 and G8, and so you activate rows E and G and columns 3 and 8, do you also get E8 and G3 illuminated?
That's still potentially valuable, but you won't see arbitrary moving images any time soon. It might be possible to use many of the passive matrix methods to allow changes at low resolutions, like segmented displays.
> Moreover, the intensity of the majority of the EL units varied by <15% even after repeated folding along different directions (Extended Data Fig. 3a–h), and the intensity of the EL units at the folding line remained stable over 10,000 cycles of folding in each folding direction (Extended Data Fig. 3i–l), indicating superior durability over traditional film displays.
I wouldn't be surprised if the early versions have durability problems, but this technology seems like it's got a lot of opportunity for optimizing that, and already seems durable enough for club wear (as opposed to, say, work clothes).
Depends - fashion products often have high cost and low durability.
It's likely using weaved vertical and horizontal fibers, with it scanning through each horizontal fiber, triggering the vertical lines in tandem to illuminate a pixel at crossing points in the row.
A sort of scanning matrix display
The hard part presumably is turning it into an addressable matrix, not simply weaving it into a fabric.
Now usually it take a 100v AC signal to drive EL-wire and it will give you a nasty shock if you're not careful I'd be a bit leary about using this fabric (plus because it's multiplexed I'd guess they're probably driving it with more than 100v to get any brightness)
I'm sure it can be done safely, but those folks touching it were all wearing gloves. I agree!
And if a single wire in the fiber breaks the entire line is gone, though this is hardly perfect with stationary stuff it seems a lot easier to happen in a fabric...
But still extremely cool. I just hesitate to wear clothes that I have to plug into a wall outlet :-D
Hell, I'd love to have the wall above the wardrobe display a few lines of text from a book, so I can read it while cleaning the living room, with my little kid not being able to see it (due to differences of eye level) and thus not becoming distracted from independent play (or helping in cleaning) by an active computer screen.
And that's just personal use; there's even more potential application in shared spaces, in industrial use, in healthcare, ...
But if these screens are to be controlled by corporations, sneak ads everywhere and otherwise not interoperate with each other, and with every device there is? Then I don't want that to exist.
I need my business casual button up to turn into a Hawaiian shirt at happy hour and a Mr Cleaver-esque pajama top when I get home.
Wearables 2.0
Not a display technology until someone figures out how to turn small sections, not just entire strands, on and off.
I don't know why you wouldn't be able to play recordings of electricsheep or something though, or just use a microphone to do effects based on audio. I'd imagine this gets adopted in costumes way before it's in something broadly used.
EL stuff has been around for awhile. The one thing this particular post makes impressive is the sheer size of it working. As soon as Lady Ada brings out these kind of rolls, then we might see some cool monochrome environmental input animations. What I'd love to see is a durable fabric with individualy addressable LEDs woven within that is as durable and washable. Then, maybe we can see some sheeps on clothing.
Until then, https://spacetribe.com/