[-empyre-] Wearable Technologies, or dances with horse

[danielle wilde]

I would not describe SymbioticA's "Victimless Leather" (2004) as a wearable.
It is a conceptual (albeit practically realised and demonstrated) meditation
and provocation on the role of animals in clothing. It is not and never was
made to be worn. *Fibre Reactive*, the fungal dress created by Donna
Franklin, in collaboration with Gary Cass, during her residency at
SymbioticA (also in 2004):
http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/residents/franklin comes closer to my
notion of a bio-art wearable as the dress is full-sized and clearly
resembles what it represents, though I'm not certain if it was safe to wear.
Donna and Gary's follow-up project: Micro'be
http://bioalloy.org/o/projects/micro-be.html (which is independent of
SymbioticA) focuses on developing clothing using microbes and wine. The
results are clearly wearable but aesthetically far less considered.

if we want to discuss bio-art wearables, it seems more pertinent to
reference Suzanne Lee's biocouture project which specifically aims to grow
garments that can be worn: http://www.biocouture.co.uk/ - she was wearing
one of them when she gave her TED Fellows talk earlier this year:
http://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_lee_grow_your_own_clothes.html
or Emily Crane's work on Micro-nutrient and cultivated couture:
http://emilycrane.co.uk/micronutrientcouture.html
or the work of any of the other designers highlighted at V2's upcoming
"Clothing Without Cloth" symposium:
http://www.v2.nl/events/clothing-without-cloth as a point of departure.

(which perhaps brings us back to you, Valérie, though your focus is not in
this area, nor is mine)

in my own work I have moved away from the use of the term *wearables* as I
feel it has so many connotations that it's difficult to pin down exactly to
what it refers, it is therefore very difficult to know if or how frameworks
align. For that reason it might be helpful if we contextualise what we are
speaking to where there is the potential for ambiguity to disrupt or
confuse.

best
danielle




On 7 May 2011 05:31, Johannes Birringer <Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk>wrote:

> dear all
>
> quite fascinating posts to start off......
> and I was not aware (in performance contexts) that there was such a heavy
> contest going on about
> "what materially makes a wearable"?  what new contexts are you referring to
> where wearables are an issue?
> (in terms of how you might like to define it?) - would you agree that in a
> performance context
> (whether stage or everyday life although I tend to think the latter is
> different from the former)
> the wearables are what you wear for a particular purpose?  Are the
> wearables here meant to
> be associated with technologies (have function other than being worn?) or
> purposes, and if they are second
> skins, then we don't have to worry, yes?
>
> Then they are us.
>
>
>
> Can I ask Janis,  whether you were referring to a particular fashion show?
>
> >>
> Much of the work shown seemed to be more about the idea of technology
> rather than about
> actually using it. Waifish models, in the spirit of androgyny, performed a
> kind of improvisation of a person who clearly did not fit into the typical
> gender roles ascribed in society
> >>
>
> hmm.  they were wearing unused wearables?
>
>
> as to the question of the skins, I think one example that came to attention
> (in the bio-art / new media art scene)
> was Symbiotica (with Oron Catts) trying to "grow" a wearable except that it
> probably was'nt going to be large enough
> for Lady Gaga, and perhaps was not intended as a costume or second skin
> anyway. As you know, The Tissue Culture
> Project has created some fascinating installations  exploring the potential
> –as well as the problems –  involved in tissue engineering.
>
> Perhaps this is what Valerie is hinting at, that growing / or medically
> inserting your third and fourth ears on your arms or legs (with network
> capabilities and memory)
> may indeed alter operational possibilities or anatomical architectures,
>  and further complex enhancements may limit what you can do on the stage or
> the team...
>
> Now, Symbiotica's "Victimless Leather" (2004), was a miniature leather
> jacket that lives inside a bioreactor. The work, I was told, was a reaction
> to using animal skins to make clothing/wearables.
> Tissue engineering may offer an alternative indeed, yet the artists grafted
> cells from a living animal  – a mouse –  onto a polymers structure of in the
> shape of a jacket.  The idea was that the cells will stay alive,
> multiply in a protected environment.  I take it the work is ironic,  as the
> “semi-living” being thus created could not really be worn, but it raises
> issues as a fetish object anyway.  And about protective environments.
> And what did the project perform?
>
> Janis argues (or uses Barad) that "science performs" or that " science, as
> a knowledge-based
> endeavour, is inherently “performative” ...  hmmm, what is it that is
> performed?  The term performativity
> tends to be used these days quite a lot and I often wonder how it is used,
> for what end and in regard to what situation.
> Would you really use such a grammar if you referred to a dancer (the dance
> dances) or an acrobat performing a particular action
> for a particular end, in a theatre or a circus,  and would it be at all
> meaningful to say that wearables perform or are performative?
> In the Cirque de Soleil, the wearables don't perform.  (and at London's
> Sadlers' Wells recently, Bartabas and Ko Murobushi performed with horses,
> or the other way round,  the horses wore out the dancers).
>
> I'd ask more specifically what it is that is performed, what is augmented
> and what is (as you imply in your reference to social autism, Janis) reduced
> and shrunk.
>
>
> with regards
> Johannes Birringer
> dap-lab
> http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap
>
> _______________________________________________
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> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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>
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