Everything it seems, if you buy them from German fashion house Trikoton. The company has developed a way of generating knitting patterns automatically from a recording of a client’s voice. Back in 2007, the founders of the company created a hack for a 1970’s automated knitting machine to exhibit at the “Ars Electronica“ festival. At the time, the pair of Magdalena Kohler and Hanna Wiesener, developed a way to control the knitting machine by voice input.
They used a micro-controller and 24 small motors in order to imitate a pattern card that could be directly controlled by live user input which was processed via a connected computer.
The company has now taken this a step further, via a Flash application on its online store. A customer is prompted to record his or her voice on the site, using a PC’s in-built microphone. The Flash application then generates a design from that, and it can be applied to whichever item of clothing you choose.