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

[Johannes Birringer]

hi all;

thanks for your response the other day (Danielle)., and I probably concur with all you say
and had brought up my questions to Valerie, actually, to find out more about how a conceptual
response (and a conceptual work such as I one I refered to, amongst more directly staged
performances with human and animal performers) can approach the issue of materiality
(what materiality defines a wearable, what wearables define performance or other functions
and in what contexts specifically and for what purpose), i think my main concern was to
get under the skin of the performative science to see who wears it, in what context, for what
audience, and for what purpose.

As to laboratory (and performanvce studio culture), i think bio-art has begun to present
a particularly interesting challenge to either paradigms of knowledge production (science and
art/humanities), and also is a kind of materials science, i think "Victimless Leather"  is a wearable
if you see it straight on (with the necessary irony) as a jacket that can grow or comments (as 
a wearable might) on bio-reactions.

I guess i am interested, from the performer (and programmer proints of view) in the bio-reactions
that are expected, desired, or played with when you wear sensors, whether openly or built into
fabrics, but meant to extend or augment your gesture or movement, behavior and appearance,
your sounding and your listening, and various other aspects of your kinesthetic or proprio-ceptions.

as kinaesthetic proprioceptions (and tactile etc. and cognitive experiences), I suggest, they happen in the wearer/performer; 
and the performer / audience divide you now address, in regard to Ashley's posting on “Noisense,”  is a natural, in most
concerts or performance, conventional or other. The performers would have trained with their instruments
or worn them to find what they do and how the performer body/mind processes the actions that are effected
(in the environment or on the body, in the system) and are effected for dramaturgical of theatrical
reasons.  I quite agree with Ashley here, if we are talking studio/laboratory work that grows into public 
presentational performance – the rehearsals are controlled and specific.  The audience would not partake in 
the same process but observe, witness and experience empathetically, as they always do, and yes, the discussion
about whether a theatre audience needs to know the functionalities or the causalities of interactivity, that's a debate
and now an old one. You make your own choices, i guess.   

In installations designed for audience interaction with a system and, if so arranged, with specific wearable instruments or
clothes or devices (analog and digital), is a whole other ball game, as probably everyone here has experienced when
designing interfaces intended for audiences to intuit, figure out, explore, play with, and have fun with or be immersed into.
hmm, would be interesting if they designed fashion runway shows like that, to let your audience slip on the new
Chalayan or wear the new Helen Storey, like her "Say Goodbye" dress before it has dissolved or as it is dissolving, i wonder
why this has not been picked up yet by dancers, probably because it's too close to the skin and the lure of the erotic.

audiences, in other words, are always included  (especially when they appear excluded), and when one asks what
the participation in experiential processes is, again one probably needs to differentiate from case to case
(the immersant in Char Davies' "Osmose" has a different experience from the onlookers, I assume, but once the
onlooker has worn the gear and floated in the Virtual World, then later when onlooking can reexperience the
process as we all do when we remember what certain things/sensations feel like.
 
It would, probably, be quite fascinating to look at social uses of wearable technologies ("social choreographies"),
and ask whether and how they differ from arts-based/contexted performances.

regards

Johannes Birringer
DAP-Lab
dans sans joux
http://www.danssansjoux.org