'Personal space dress' which expands to protect women's public territory - PHOTO+VIDEO

A Cornell-educated artist and sculptor has come up with a highly bizarre, but probably very effective, 'personal space' creating dress.Kathleen McDermott, who is currently based in Hong Kong, designed the motorized dress after experiencing repeated instances of men crowding her on public transportation networks. The ruffled pink and white creation doesn't spring out suddenly in the fashion of an umbrella, as it looks like it might, but rather senses a looming presence, and slowly expands outwards.'I wanted to explore how wearable technology could impact a person's physical world,' she writes on her website, Kthartic.'So I began to look for ways women could take more ownership over their personal space in public.'Ms McDermott built the dress herself, with the help of a prototyping company, and used 'proximity sensors' to identify when a lurker gets too close for comfort, and plastic scaffolding within the garment to enable the hemline to expand.The artist points out that women in particular tend to experience the matter of personal space very differently, according to their age, race or social standing for example.'How would [different types of women] use technology to augment their experience of public space, given the opportunity?' she poses.While she admits her 'personal space dress' is a 'playful' creation, the sexual harassment of women who ride mass transit is no joke.Most of us have experienced unwanted leering on the subway, but plenty have dealt with worse in busy, thriving cities around the world.A survey two weeks ago conducted by the Los Angeles Metro system, which covers trains and buses, revealed that one in five riders say they've been sexually harassed in the past month. In Tokyo, the problem has become so alarming that their Metro system has introduced 'women-only' cars on their trains during rush hour.Indeed, The New York Times reported a major New York transit hearing in 2009, which found that sexual harassment is the number one offense which 'affects the quality of urban life' on subways. Police said the peak times for those arrests was during morning and afternoon rush hours.Ms McDermott's dress, while comical to behold and admittedly entirely impractical, was designed more to establish a point than to actually manufacture and sell.Long-term, she says she wants this dress, and other similar pieces, to be become 'instructables' - to exist in an online library whereby anyone can download the instructions and tech code, and build one themselves, for whatever reason.Other wacky 'wearable electronics' she has created as part of her growing Urban Armour project, include a scarf with a built-in pollution sensor; which pops up to form a protective filter against cigarette smoke or car exhaust fumes.Ms McDermott is currently pursuing a Masters in Fine Art and Creative Media, at City University of Hong Kong.(dailymail.co.uk) Bakudaily.az