Scientists Create Cloth that Listens and Produces Sound

I'm quite a bit behind on videos, music, and pieces of news that should be of interest to the readers of this blog... I'll try to get them up as soon as I can.

Here's something was in the news this past July, which you may have missed.  A group of scientists at MIT have created a cloth that can "hear" and emit noise. It's a functional fibre that can detect sound and change them into electrical signals on one end - so it acts like a massive, body microphone. On the other end, the fibre can vibrate at specific frequencies if it is connected to a power supply - like a massive speaker.

So your clothes could be your own ghetto blaster - just hook up your ipad to your clothes and you have a massive speaker that surrounds you - literally - in sound. Or it could record your heartbeats, environmental surroundings, and of course your vocals for later use..... imagine the creative possibilities!

Naturally, this seems more useful in medical (keeping track of biological signs on a wearer) or military/surveillance (how easy would it be to record conversations, if all you needed was a piece of cloth?)....but the musical creativity that could emerge from such a product would be so fascinating.

The fibres look like this:

For more on the science behind this, follow this link.