Artistic BCI in Fashion: Anouk Wipprecht’s ScreenDress and Brain-Controlled Wearables by g.tec

Anouk Wipprecht’s ScreenDress, is more than a piece of fashion—it’s a live display of the mind at work. Controlled by g.tec’s Unicorn BCI Core headband (coming soon), the dress takes neural data and turns it into a dynamic visual experience. As brain-computer interfaces move from labs into real-world use, this piece shows how tech and art can collide to create something unexpected and powerful.

Artistic BCI Meets Wearable Technology: Mind-Controlled Expression in Motion

The ScreenDress is powered by g.tec’s Unicorn BCI Core-8, a new EEG device designed for seamless, wireless brain recordings in both humans and animals. The compact unit can be mounted in various caps or straps, depending on the application. For this project, Anouk Wipprecht integrated it into a custom-designed headband, turning advanced neurotechnology into a wearable fashion feature.

The headset reads brain signals without gels or complex setup, making it fast and accessible. Those signals are then used to control the visuals embedded into the fabric of the dress. As brain states shift, the display reacts in real time, merging neurotech with fashion in a way that’s both functional and expressive.

The concept behind the dress is direct: visualize the mental state of the wearer. Focus, relaxation, cognitive load—each is translated into movement and imagery. It turns internal processes into a public, visual narrative. The dress doesn’t just display light or animation—it displays you. It’s not about decoration. It’s about data-driven expression.

Anouk Wipprecht: Where Fashion Interfaces with the Brain

Anouk Wipprecht is no stranger to this kind of fusion. Based in the Netherlands, she works at the edges of design, robotics, and neuroscience. Her pieces react, perform, defend, and respond. Each garment is a system, often robotic, always interactive. In a world of fast fashion, she builds thoughtful, tech-infused statements. The ScreenDress marks the third collaboration between Wipprecht and g.tec.

The First Collaboration: Unicorn Hybrid Black Opens the Door to Artistic BCI

The partnership between Anouk Wipprecht and g.tec began with the creation of the Agent Unicorn using the 8-channel EEG headset Unicorn Hybrid Black—a wearable device built to bring brain-computer interface technology into the hands of artists, developers, and creators beyond traditional neuroscience labs.

Designed as a high-quality, user-friendly EEG system, the Unicorn Hybrid Black offers reliable, accurate data while remaining easy to use. Whether you’re a neuroscientist running experiments, a programmer building applications, or an artist exploring brain-based expression, this headset bridges the gap between science and creativity.

Unicorn Hybrid Black supports these BCI paradigms:

• Motor Imagery: Electrodes placed over the sensorimotor cortex to detect imagined movement.
• P300: Electrodes over central, parietal, and occipital regions for stimulus-based response detection.
• SSVEP & CVEP: Electrodes focused on the parietal areas for visually evoked potentials.

Reference and ground electrodes are fixed to the mastoids to ensure stable, noise-free signal acquisition. This setup gives users a solid foundation for real-time BCI applications, whether for control, interaction, or visualization.

The Unicorn Hybrid Black was developed specifically to support Anouk’s vision: to use brain signals not just for communication or control, but for expression. This headset became the foundation for future artistic BCI projects, making it possible to turn thought into motion, and brain activity into interactive performance.

It marked the beginning of a collaboration that continues to reshape how we think about EEG—not just as a clinical tool, but as a creative interface.

The Second Collaboration: High-Density EEG Meets Kinetic Couture

The Pangolin Dress—the second collaboration between g.tec and Anouk Wipprecht—used g.tec’s g.Pangolin system, the world’s first ultra-high-density electrode grid and biopotential amplifier. This technology was key to creating a garment that physically responded to brain activity.

g.Pangolin uses active wet electrode technology to record high-resolution EEG, EMG, ECG, or other biopotentials. It connects to g.tec’s g.HIamp, a powerful multi-channel backend that can record biosignals with 24-bit resolution and a sampling rate of up to 38,400 Hz per channel. This precision allows for incredibly detailed readings of the brain’s activity.

What makes g.Pangolin stand out is its exact electrode spacing and small contact areas, which enable extremely dense spatial recordings. This level of detail is ideal for advanced source localization—both in real-time and offline—making it possible to map neural activity with remarkable accuracy.

In the Pangolin Dress, these data were translated into movement. As the wearer’s mental state shifted, the dress’s scales opened and closed—mimicking the defensive behavior of a pangolin, but driven by the brain. The setup ran through g.HIsys, g.tec’s software environment that allows real-time data acquisition, visualization, and processing, capable of handling up to 1,024 channels across four g.HIamp devices.

It wasn’t just a reactive fashion piece—it was a live brain interface in motion, making visible the usually hidden dynamics of mental focus, engagement, and thought.

The second, the Pangolin Dress, responded to brain activity with kinetic motion, opening its scales in response to mental states. The ScreenDress builds on both, using g.tec’s most advanced hardware yet to bring visual storytelling to the surface of the body.

Why Collaborating with Artists Matters for BCI Development

For g.tec, these collaborations are more than experimental. They’re essential. Working with artists like Wipprecht brings brain-computer interface technology into new territory—interactive design, performance, and public engagement. Artistic BCI projects like these show the expressive, emotional, and even confrontational side of neurotech. They remind us that BCI isn’t only for labs. It’s for stages, galleries, and streets too.

The ScreenDress makes one thing clear: the brain isn’t just a control center—it’s a canvas.