16 aug Could the future of tech interfaces belong on the skin’s surface?

Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, a PhD student at MIT has created a prototype for temporary tattoos which could turn the body into a remote controller of devices. The exciting concept comes as the result of time spent at a summer internship at Microsoft Research and draws from Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao’s own experience of the Taiwanese culture of using cosmetics and accessories to ”change and edit” your appearance however you like.

The prototype, DuoSkin, allows the imagination to run wild in considering a future where the flesh transcends itself to become an interface which allows you to control your digital demands without having to use uniform technological extensions of the body. This far fetched technology may just be another in a long line of MIT produced concepts which pull the cap off the limits of the human imagination, but there’s no denying the fact that there is some substance here that could be applied to the real human experience in a practical way.

The tattoos borrow their design from traditional fashion accessory ’stick on’ tattoos, and use a layer of gold leaf for both aesthetic and insulation to which a silicon overlay is added, powered in full by a lithium polymer battery and connected wirelessly to devices via NFC.

Check out the video below to see Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao’s prototypes in action: