A physical jump is translated into a post on Twitter.
Connected interactive footwear · 2012
JUMP!
Electronic sneakers that turn one, two or three jumps into social-media posts, Street View images and map pins, linking bodily movement to an emerging culture of automatic sharing.
Read the project ↓
Project typeTool / prototype · Collaboration · Fashiontech
ThemesEmbodied & haptic interaction · Wearables & e-textiles
FormConnected interactive footwear
Developed2012
TechnologyBluetooth + Android / Moto X
PresentedFashion × Technology · New York Fashion Week 2013
01 · Proposition
A jump becomes a networked command
JUMP! embeds electronics into an Adidas x Opening Ceremony shoe design, transforming a familiar bodily gesture into a compact language for acting across social and location-based platforms.
Developed by Ricardo O’Nascimento and POPKALAB, the sneakers communicate by Bluetooth with a purpose-built Android application running on a Motorola Moto X. The application interprets the number of consecutive jumps and assigns a different online action to each pattern.
One jump generates a Twitter post. Two jumps capture a Google Street View image and publish it to Facebook. Three jumps place a pin on the wearer’s personal Google map. The work makes the translation from movement to data deliberately legible: a playful action leaves both a physical trajectory and a virtual trace.
Video documentation
Fashion × Technology at NYFW
02 · Experience
Jump, interpret, publish
- 01
Jump
Electronics embedded in the footwear detect a sequence of one, two or three physical jumps.
- 02
Interpret
The shoes transmit the gesture by Bluetooth to a tailor-made Android application on a Motorola Moto X.
- 03
Publish
The application translates the jump count into a post, a Street View image or a location pin.
03 · Reflection
The body leaves a programmable trace
JUMP! emerged when social platforms were rapidly becoming everyday infrastructures, asking what happens when sharing is attached directly to bodily action.
The project treats jumping as both expression and instruction. Its simple one–two–three vocabulary makes automation visible rather than seamless, foregrounding the chain that connects movement, sensing, mobile computation, platform APIs and public data. Read historically, the prototype also exposes the fragility of connected fashion: its original Twitter, Facebook and Google actions depended on services and interfaces that have since changed. The work therefore records not only an experiment in embodied interaction, but a particular moment in the platformisation of everyday life.
A Google Street View image is captured and posted to Facebook.
The wearer’s location is added as a pin to a personal Google map.
Exhibition history
Selected presentations
Fashion × Technology · New York Fashion Week
Opening Ceremony BTW at SuperPier
New York City, USA
Credits & archive
Project record
- Concept and development
- Ricardo O’Nascimento / POPKALAB
- POPKALAB team
- Ricardo O’Nascimento, Niels Sascha Reedijk and Simon de Bakker
- Commission
- Moondial for Cool Hunting
- Shoe design
- Adidas × Opening Ceremony
- Exhibition curators
- Cool Hunting and Dr Sabine Seymour / Moondial
- Sponsor and mobile platform
- Motorola / Moto X
- Project photography
- Mathew Kelly
