Dancing With the Stars

Yes, that was my work on the results show tonight ... more info coming soon!

10 year anniversary!

This month, I'm celebrating the 10 year anniversary of my first full-body lighted costumes, the "Dudes in Tubes" suits (containing hundreds of motion-reactive color-changing LEDs, mounted in rubber tubes). I had dabbled in wearable electronics before that, adding lights to a tie, a hat, and a few parts of Halloween costumes, but this project induced the late-night "aha!" moment where I knew I'd found the right career for my eclectic mix of interests and skills. I even called my company "Eclectic Electric Cyberwear" for a while, but that was too much of a mouthful, so I changed it to Enlighted in early 2000.

See this page for more info about my early work, or watch the video on youtube.

more info on the Grammys

I've posted some background info and more photos (including a few from rehearsals) from last week's Grammy Awards, see this page.

Daft Punk and Kanye West at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards

Yes, we were there, backstage!  Daft Punk made a surprise appearance onstage with Kanye West, wearing their red lighted suits from the Alive 2007 tour (the same ones that we illuminated, with a few extra pieces, like gloves, pants, and shoes).  We were also quite involved as creative consultants for the other portable lighting in the performance, and installed the aqua EL outlines on the violins.   The lighted jacket and glasses were made by Nyx (friends of Enlighted).

We'll have more to say soon, when we add a page to enlighted.com, but in the meantime, here's the Daft Punk press release:

"The iconic and critically acclaimed French duo Daft Punk made a surprise appearance at the 50th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles Sunday night. For their first ever television performance, they teamed up with Kanye West to perform his 2007 smash hit "Stronger", which samples the group's 2001 single "Harder Better Faster Stronger" from their landmark album Discovery. For the Grammy Awards, Daft Punk and Kanye West performed an original version of "Stronger" they created specifically for this event, marking Daft Punk's only television performance in the 14 year history of the band."

daft punk's red robot suits

If we wrote our own "best of 2007" list of Enlighted projects, our top choice would have to be the lighted suits we built for Daft Punk's Alive 2007 tour. We had a great time working with the band and their amazing production team, and helped to develop their design concept and select the best way to achieve the effects they desired (in a relatively short time frame). Then, Enlighted installed hundreds of feet of EL wire and hundreds of LEDs on the jackets and helmets of their signature robot costumes.

Overall, it was an incredibly fun and exciting project, and even more thrilling to see the way the crowd responded when the lighted costumes were activated as a surprise during the encore.

Now that the tour is over, and we've had a little time to organize our photos, we've posted a description of the suits on this page.

back view of a jacket in our studio

testing at rehearsal

as seen during the encore of the Alive 2007 tour

10 Weirdest Tech Devices of 2007

Someone over at PC Magazine likes us (we think), and has included our lighted clothing on their list of the "10 Weirdest Tech Devices of 2007" on pcmag.com. The silicone lighted nerve bra ranked #7, in case you're curious.

updates galore

I'm in the process of making some significant changes on enlighted.com ... adding new examples from my backlog of completed projects, and rearranging the gallery pages to improve the overall organization (250+ pages now!). I'll be using this blog for extra commentary on the new projects, so don't be alarmed if I start posting here a lot more often.

Lady of the Light

A recent article explains why LEDs are "my life".  

Excerpt: "Janet Hansen didn’t get a Christmas tree, and she doesn’t need one. Her front window boasts rainbow Christmas lights year round and, as you step into her home, past bright geometric paintings popping off walls, through glowing vines and 4-D Escher designs, up the stairs and to the left, you enter Hansen’s studio—the home of Enlighted Designs Inc. and the place where Hansen’s bright ideas become even brighter."

See the full article at sdcitybeat.com

color-changing scarf on instructables

Good news for DIYers - I've joined the instructables online community, and for my first project I've posted directions for making a lighted color-changing fuzzy scarf (similar to the coat posted here and on my site, but with a more manageable number of lights).

Hopefully this will help as a starting point for the many people who ask me "how do you make lighted clothes?" ... while I can't sum up 10 years of experience in a quick tutorial, it should give you a better idea of the general process, and some of the steps that are involved.

Link to instructables.com

color-changing faux fur coat

Yes, I know it's been ages since I wrote anything here ... this has been a very busy year for Enlighted, but I'm finally catching up with some updates to the site. For example, this is one of my favorite new pieces, a polka dotted faux fur coat with over 400 color-changing LEDs embedded in the fur. More info on this page.