[-empyre-] Introducing this month's guests on -empyre-

[traceyb@byte-time.net]

This month I would like to welcome our guests Heidi Kumao, Katherine Moriwaki
and Florian 'Floyd' Mueller. All of these artists have a unique perspective on
the use of wearable technologies and utilise forms of these technologies in
their work.

Heidi Kumao uses technology to address feminist issues and to present a female
point of view into the world of high tech innovation. Heidi's also works
collaboratively with 'Preemptive media', a group of artists, activists and
technologists, who create projects around emerging technologies. Their most
recent project 'Zapped!' investigates the use of RFID (Radio Frequency
Identification) tags that industry is adopting for product tracking, the
government for border control and public libraries for automatic checkout.

Katherine Moriwaki recently participated at Siggraph, in the Extreme Fashion:
Designers, Artists, and Technologists Present a Glimpse Into the Place Where
High Fashion Collides With High Technology special session (check out
http://www.siggraph.org/s2005/main.php?f=conference&p=special&s=extreme)
She will be joining us later this month with a report from Siggraph.

Florian 'Floyd' Mueller is a Principal Scientist in the ICT Centre, leading the
connecting people group at the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial
Research Centre), Australia. His research interests are in novel interfaces
that help people to connect, to media as well as other people. His project 'Hug
over a distance'(http://www.floydmueller.com/portfolio/hug_over_a_distance.htm)
explores creating the feeling of a hug with an inflatable vest triggered by
messages sent over the internet.

I am very much looking forward to their posts and the discussion on -empyre-