Tattoos Glow in the Digital Age

Tattoos Glow in the Digital Age
It was only a matter of time, but it now appears that the digital tattoo is about to burst onto the horizon in all its pixilated glory. What started as a challenge to the global design community, Green Gadgets Conference organizer Core 77 asked designers to create innovative solutions addressing the issues of energy and social development. I’m not sure if he had Jim Mielke’s wireless blood-fueled display in mind when he issued the challenge, but never-the-less, the freak fringe of emerging designers has spoken, with a green gadget that was the hit of the conference, and an odd merging of technology and body art with these types of tattoos.
The subcutaneously implanted touch-screen operates as a digital cell phone display, with the potential to view 3G video phone calls through the skin, which would also mean that the display would have to be implanted just under the skin, for those of us that didn’t know what subcutaneously means.
The Bluetooth device, a 2x4-inch “Digital Tattoo Interface, is made of thin flexible silicone and is inserted into a small incision in the skin. The tightly rolled tube is then unrolled and finds its new home between the skin and muscle tissue.
Using the same small incision, two small tubes on the device are attached to an artery and a vein, allowing the blood to flow through a coin-sized blood fuel cell, converting glucose and oxygen into electricity. Although it’s unclear how the coin sized cell finds its way through the same small incision.
A matching-matrix of field producing pixels is located on both the top and the bottom of the display. The top surface also doubles as a touch-screen, controlled through the skin. The display uses tiny microscopic spheres instead of ink, the changing colors controlled by a field-sensitive material in the spheres. The digital tattoo communicates wirelessly to other Bluetooth devices from inside the body and the outside.
The device is always on as long as your blood is flowing, although the display can be turned off by pushing a small dot on the skin. When you receive an incoming phone call, for example, you turn the display on and the “tattoo comes to life," so to speak, as a digital video of the caller.
When the call is finished, the tattoo simply disappears. Could the device have any harmful effects and are these types of tattoos the wave of the future? Who knows, but it is kind of cool, and creepy, at the same time. Noel Christian can be found helping people make informed tattoo decisions about the differant types of tattoos at Angel Heart Tattoo.com.