🎀 making a programmable LED skirt 🎄 [creative tech saga]

08 Jun, 2026

A lot of things have been on my mind lately, but the main one is that I want to do more creative tech. Considering even starting a master's in that direction (but not sure yet). What particularly interests me is creativity & interaction. So something like a new media, interactive technologies, or human-computer interaction program. If you're in any of these fields, please reach out at my e-mail 💌 address and let's chat. I'm super curious (but also a bit scared) of what life on that side of the fence would look like.

But until then, I really want to try my hand at more creative projects! So, this is a prototype for a programmable LED skirt:

I want to make a second one with a more reusable design, sewn from scratch (I'll have to learn how to use a sewing machine), including a way to detach the band. I am also thinking of ways to make it interactive, or react to music/the environment somehow. Maybe for dancing, react to spins, and change the pattern. But we'll see how that goes.

Right now it's just an addressable LEDs strip connected to an esp32c3 running esp32-fastled-ble.

And here's me dancing Lindy Hop in it, in pretty poor quality to meet Bear's <10mb requirements:

Unfortunately there was still too much light outside for the effect to be visible, but indoors/at night it looks really cool.

I think there is a lot of fun and creativity still left to be had with technology. Even though stuff may look bleak, it really doesn't have to be. It's easy to fall into despair, looking at the state of the tech industry. I guess it's also up to us to turn to more hopeful things to try to improve the world around us.

So yeah, going forward, you'll hopefully see more glimpses of these kinds of things on this blog :) And if you feel the same way, the more the merrier, I'm looking for collaborations for interactive projects, e-mail me :D

I am also thinking of putting these things on an instagram page (currently empty) to maybe spread the word a bit, so that will be another place where you could follow along for the more visual/flashy stuff. Or here, of course :)