[-empyre-] August on -empyre- soft-skinned space: Wearable Technologies

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

August on -empyre- soft-skinned space:  Wearable Technologies


with guests Heidi Kumao, Katherine Moriwaki and Florian 'Floyd' Mueller



This month on -empyre-,  we venture into the world of wearable  
technologies in the context of social and public art practice.   
Katherine Moriwaki (US) is an artist and researcher investigating  
clothing accessories as the active conduit through which people  
create network relationships in public space.   Florian 'Floyd'  
Mueller (AU) designs interfaces that deliberately require intense  
physical effort to facilitate social connectedness between remote  
participants.  Heidi Kumao's (US) incisive feminist practice  
currently investigates the RFID tags that industry is adopting for  
product tracking, the government for border control and public  
libraries for automatic checkout.

Join us at

<http://www.subtle.net/empyre>






August guest biographies:



----------------------> Katherine Moriwaki is an artist and  
researcher investigating clothing and accessories as the active  
conduit through which people create network relationships in public  
space. After receiving her Masters degree from the Interactive  
Telecommunications Program at New York University's Tisch School of  
the Arts, Katherine co-developed and taught the ground-breaking  
collaboration studio "Fashionable Technology" at Parsons School of  
Design. Currently a Ph.D. Candidate in the Networks and  
Telecommunications Research Group at Trinity College Dublin, her work  
has appeared in IEEE Spectrum Magazine, and numerous festivals and  
conferences including numer.02 at Centre Georges Pompidou (02), Break  
2.2 (03), Ubicomp (03,04), eculture fair (03), Transmediale (04), CHI  
(04), ISEA (04), Ars Electronica (04), Wired NextFest (05), and  
Siggraph (05). She is a 2004 recipient of the Araneum Prize from the  
Spanish Ministry for Science and Technology and Fundacion ARCO.
<http://www.kakirine.com>



----------------------> Florian 'Floyd' Mueller is a Principal  
Scientist in the ICT Centre, leading the "Connecting People" group at  
CSIRO - Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation,  
Australia. His research interests are in novel interfaces that help  
people to connect, to media as well as to other people, creating a  
more seamless connection between humans and technology. He proposed  
the concept of Exertion Interfaces: interfaces that deliberately  
require intense physical effort to facilitate social connectedness  
between remote participants at <http://exertioninterfaces.com>  
Mueller earned his first degree in Digital Media from Furtwangen,  
Germany. He received his second degree in Multimedia from Griffith  
University in Australia and a Masters degree in Media Arts and  
Sciences from the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, USA. He has worked for  
industry and research companie such as Virtual Artists, Springer  
Verlag, Xerox PARC, FX Palo Alto Laboratory MIT, University of  
Melbourne and Media Lab Europe. Floyd's research centers on the  
challenge of creating an interface that is engaging and fun, not  
simply functional.  <http://floydmueller.com>



------------------------> Heidi Kumao is an artist who dissects  
ordinary social interactions using new media and animation, kinetic/ 
electronic sculpture, and performance art.  Her work takes the form  
of intimate robotic/kinetic installations, single channel videos and  
animations, and wearable electronics. She uses technology to address  
feminist issues and insert a femal point of view into the world of  
high-tech innovation. “WiredWear” consists of the research, design,  
and creation of one-of-a-kind articles of women’s clothing equipped  
with custom electronics and an accompanying informational video. Each  
article enhances the wearer’s everyday life by transforming the  
smallest social interaction or relationship into a performative  
exchange or by providing the wearer with important vital information  
(words of encouragement, bio feedback, etc.). Kumao also works  
collaboratively with Preemptive Media, a group of artists, activists,  
and technologists to create projects around emerging technologies and  
their corresponding policies such as RFID (Radio Frequency  
Identification). Their most recent project, Zapped!, investigates the  
RFID tags that industry is adopting for product tracking, the  
government for border control and public libraries for automatic  
checkout.   <http://www.heidikumao.net>