Re: [-empyre-] Greetings from Michigan

[hight@34n118w.net]

fantasy wearables.......hmmmm

I would love to have climate and weather event adaptive clothing......mabe
fabric patterns that can spread out in geometry as measured temperature
and humidity increases......and can unify into density as temperature and
humidity decrease..........different mesh patterns ....

and I see smart lenses being more common.........computing done in the
field of vision.........this can connect to wearables..

my mother died from multiple sclerosis 4 years ago......she was bedridden
for 15 years and for years could communicate only with a plastic child's
letter board by spelling out sentences condensed into key phrases.....then
she had full paralysis on one side of her body and lost hand eye
coordination ....

we had a very early researcher come out to propose an early protptype be
for her  .......a retinal scanning shorthand system of computing and
typing......

sadly.....my father told the researcher to go away and that it would be
wrong for her.......as a result she could only blink yes or no until she
passed away............I often think with great sadness of the many
conversations we could have had...what she could have told me...


this technology really will become widely used....I saw the potential 13
years ago......and see it more now...............full computing while
sitting on a train.........in a park.......and all in glasses and a small
memory storage and hard drive system either to behind the ear or along to
the sleeve of smart clothing and into sensors in the fabric that also
could work with temperature control.......circulation.....function
monitoring for those that need to monitor blood pressure.......heart
rate.....etc........

















 Hi all,
> Sorry to be so delayed in starting this.  Greetings from lovely Ann
> Arbor, Michigan.  I'd like to see a dialog of people's ideas about
> wearables and their function, where people think they are going, and
> the fantasy wearables we might wish we had.
>
> While I have been making technological art for awhile (low tech cinema
> machines, kinetic sculpture, animations), it is a completely new
> adventure for me to make wearables.  The pieces I have made so far
> (custom fit for my body and specifically for a female body) were all
> motivated by personal/emotional needs: audio activated bra and dress,
> disciplining corset (Posture Generator), and a very beta Purring Shawl
> to indicate pleasure.  While the objects (I call them "Performative
> Technologies") themselves are exhibit-friendly, it is the video
> performances that are the meat of the pieces, the images and the ideas
> behind them, be they comical or pointed in some way.  Certainly, I have
> been influenced by feminist discourse and critiques of women's fashion
> (at least in Western culture) and its constrictive nature, the video
> performances of Martha Rosler, William Wegman, feminist performance
> artists  such as Hannah Wilke or Ana Mendieta, and I am seeking to
> broaden the scope of both performative work and technological wearables
> into projects that might address people's emotional/psychological
> needs.
> At this time, this might mean simply brainstorming about what
> psychological needs are most common, and try to address those.  I would
> be interested in hearing people's ideas about that.  (Could a wearable
> replace Prozac?)
>
> Did anyone go to the International Wearable Computing conference in
> Washington DC last fall?
> It's a fairly small conference (which is nice).  Lots of both
> commercial applications (defense/war, wrist computers for making
> workers more efficient), and pure research and artistic plays.  There
> was a whole team of students and professors sporting  wearable
> computers (with head mounted displays) from Georgia Tech and lots of
> student presentations. One presentation by a German student was quite
> memorable for me because of its oversight.  This student was in the
> process of inventing a wearable phone device that could detect what
> number you wanted to dial by the number of fingers you waved past your
> ear.  Forward and backward, the users hand would go with different
> fingered arrangements flying in the air next to their head.  The
> moderator asked the student if he was aware that those hand gestures
> might not be polite in certain cultures.  I thought it was hilarious,
> but it also opened up a whole field of discussion in terms of what body
> positions, gestures, postures, and behaviors we might find ourselves
> doing in order to use new wearables.  Can the wearable dictate a
> certain kind of behavior ?  What kinds of behavior do we want to
> create?  Can we create a wearable to do that?
>
> Those are some questions I have for now.  There are more.  I am
> interested in the stories about wearables' use.  Since this type of
> work is inherently connected to the body and a sensory experience, it
> seems only natural that the "research" aspect of making these include
> stories and responses.
>
>
> Heidi Kumao
> heidikumao.net
>
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