[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 78, Issue 13

Tue May 17 08:55:33 EST 2011

Thank you for the links Johannes and your thought provoking questions. I was not familiar with the Double Skin/Double Mind (2007) you mention or the FuturePerfect festival in NY with explicit focus on the perceptual psychology and immersion experience.

I am however aware of interactive and participatory art and research of artists such as George Khut, where bio feedback from the heart beat obtained from a heart rate monitor can be used to drive video and visual display (http://georgekhut.com/artworks/), which I think moves partially towards answering your question on (visual) display:

>> wonder, Michele, whether such augmentation (inside and outside) that you address could be displayed in such installations, to let audiences and users explore intrapsychological dimensions, and how wearing and moving in an outfit/garment or an exoskeleton, and how interactional experiences affect / transform understanding and perceiving of inner/outer architectures?

The intrapsychological dimension and kinesthetic empathy, as you know has been explored through the convergences of neuroscience and dance in research projects such as ‘Watching Dance.’

The Watching Dance Project is coming to an end after three years of research funded by the AHRC. During this time researchers across four UK universities have used audience research and neuroscience to explore spectator responses to dance, focusing on kinesthetic empathy (the sensation of movement in the observer).

http://www.watchingdance.org/news_events/forthcoming_events/index.php 

I think all of this is leading more towards understanding and then perhaps displaying or revealing our internal impulses and the affects of other agencies on those impulses (to both ourselves and others).

CuteCircuit you could argue has been exploring this notion of augmentation and haptic sensation or sense of touch in their Hug Shirts: http://www.cutecircuit.com/products/thehugshirt/

I am no neuroscientist or biologist but I know, as I mentioned in my first mail, the need for artists and designers such as myself to develop a better understanding of the body in order to progress our works and experimentations in augmentations.

Johannes writes:

>>This notion of an inside augmentation I had not thought about, as in the rehearsals in our studio (on design and performance), I mostly work on the physical performance side and how the dancer or performer is processing both the physical kinesthetic experience (of working inside augmented realities and programming environments) and proprioceptive relations, as well as the "controller functions" that are given to the human body through worn sensors or remote control devices but also amplificatory or bioradio devices that pick up internal "movement" (pulse, etc) and also operate on the thresholds. >>

I am trying to respond to you and it is simple and complex at the same time and I hope what I say and the examples I use are helpful and make sense, perhaps provide provocation for discussion. Antonio Damasio writes on organisms, bodies and brains in Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and The Human Brain (1994), discussing their interactions and then also the interactions with the environment and external sensory stimuli. 

He writes: 

>>The brain and the body are indissociably integrated by mutually targeted biochemical and neural circuits. There are two principal routes for interconnection. The route usually thought of first is made of sensory and motor peripheral nerves, which carry signals from every part of the body to the brain, and from the brain to every part of the body. The outer route, which comes less easily to mind although it is far older in evolution, is the bloodstream; it carries chemical signals such as hormones, neurotransmitters, and modulators.>>

He goes on to say:

>>Nearly every part of the body, every muscle, joint, and internal organ, can send signals to the brain via the peripheral nerves. Those signals enter the brain at the level of the spinal cord or the brain stem, and eventually are carried inside the brain, from neural station to neural station, to the somatosensory cortices in the parietal lobe and insular regions.>>

He also talks about the opposite flow of brain transmissions to all parts of the body, no longer a body in parts or a partitioned body as was the fantasy of early modern Europe, (David Hillman & Carlo Mazzio) but a fully integrated system where body and brain interact. 

Research projects such as 'Watching Dance' have tried to understand the impact more fully of external impacts and stimuli on internal impulses.

We become neurologically ‘wired’ in certain ways by our habitual patterns and to break these patterns we need to find ways to encourage the formation of new pathways. Working with technologies can maybe then be argued to augment the body in such a way as to enable the formation of these new pathways.

On the subject of organisms and environment interacting, Damasio says:

>>If body and brain interact with each other intensely, the organism they form interacts with its surroundings no less so. Their relations are mediated by the organism’ movement and its sensory devices.>>

Surely, our new sensors can be seen as augmenters of our senses, (as they stimulate new and  unexplored neural activity in the eye, the ear, the skin and so on), drivers of our internal neuropsychological processes and internal motions as these are all interconnected to our physical kinesthetic displays and experiences.

Michele

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Today's Topics:

   1. Wearable Technologies: Cross Disciplinary Ventures.
      (Michele Danjoux)
   2. Re: Wearable Technologies: or, dances with sound
      (Johannes Birringer)

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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 16:38:47 +0100
From: "Michele Danjoux" <mdanjoux at dmu.ac.uk>
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: [-empyre-] Wearable Technologies: Cross Disciplinary
	Ventures.
Message-ID:
	<87F8F8969C2B98499F268FCB5CA794990500ECE8 at hemera.LEC-ADMIN.dmu.ac.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Re: Wearable Technologies: Cross Disciplinary Ventures.

In response to some of the things that have been discussed to date, I think now, in the context of wearable technologies (where we are considering the internal and external architectures and augmentation of the body) that it is perhaps less interesting to talk about the notion of the ?spectacle? where the main concern is to create memorable appearance (unless perhaps this is to convey message as discussed below in Wonderland example) and to turn our gaze more fully to ?Human-Garment Interactions? (David Bryson) and the importance of both physical and digital materiality where we look to augment the senses through a better understanding of both the technological, material and inter/intra psychological dimensions.
Textile and garment technologies now have the capabilities to augment the body both inside and out, textiles repair bulging arteries (stents) for instance to offer a patching and compression for damaged systems when the body can no longer effectively function or sustain itself. This type of compression can also be exerted externally for post-operative garments to encourage the flow of lymphatics and aid recovery. In a military context for the compression category, we have specially designed inflatable suits for fighter pilots to combat the effects of G-force. 

All this requires a superb knowledge of the human body, its biological, structural architectures, functioning systems, capabilities under duress etc. Fashion designers usually do not have this knowledge and I have often found in my many years of being a fashion designer / educator that fashioners designers and students will rarely pay detailed attention to the human body from a structural, movement and functioning point of view. Their questions always have focused on the design aesthetics generally, as suitable for a standard size 10-12 body and so we often find that a new design trend, silhouette etc., will in fact govern the movement of the body in the garment so as to train the body as opposed to allowing a two-way exchange.

Through my own work, with dancers within digital performance contexts, I employ a more chorographic approach to design of wearable for performer, where co-creation and iterative design methods are key. My design approach combines the practical and physical with the theoretical and philosophical. But generally, I like to introduce the materials and technologies as initiators of design concepts and motivational tools for movement. Over the years, I have questioned the static and essentially anatomically uninformed fashion design process to employ more dynamic and scientific approaches to design. In a way, my design process has also become more closely aligned with that of the product designer with prototyping and refinement of Human-Garment Interactions, but primarily, I see myself as a choreographer re-writing body and garment in emergent design-in-motion contexts.

David Bryson, University of Derby, UK, who lectures in forensic science and has a background in studies of anatomy, posits the need for closer Human-Garment Interaction in his essay on ?Designing Smart Clothing for the Body? in the book ?Smart Clothes and Wearable Technology.? He acknowledges that ?there is now wide understanding in the computer industry of what is termed Human-Computer Interactions (HCI), the design of interfaces looking at the way humans interact with technology? This work now needs to move into the realm of garments to lead an appreciation of what I am terming Human-Garment Interactions (HGI).?
For me, the garments and their integrated technologies can be like extensions of the natural sensing body. ?We use instruments as an extension of our hands and they may serve also as an extension of our senses. We assimilate them to our body by pouring ourselves into them?? 
Michael Polanyi, The Study of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 25.
Experiential wearing and its impact on the design process is also a growing area of interest in the realm of garment /fashion design and the notion of creating a better understanding of the emotional connections between wearer and garment.
On Literature and communication:
One of my MA Fashion Bodywear students, (I run a small MA practice-based design programme exploring the fusions between intimate apparel and outerwear design at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK) wrote in her final thesis (unpublished) on the subject of emotional wearing and commented on the traditions that have generally existed in the discipline giving reference to the spectacle, saying:
Fashion theory has generally focused on the relationship between consumer and clothing in the sense of the ?seen? garment. Writings are extensively concerned with the notions of identity and portrayal of oneself through the adornment of the body and of the self. Consumerism of clothing is inextricably linked with external communication of personality, being either real or false, to fit in with the surroundings and the social acceptances of the location of the wearer? Subsequently, it could be suggested that the person who adorns their body with these garments would be aware of this fact and is therefore subject to the judgement inflicted upon them by the gaze of others?
Nicola Williamson, MA Fashion Bodywear graduate 2010.
One can most definitely argue that Chalayan?s video dress is all about the ?seen? garment and the notion of the spectacle with its opening and closing rose displayed via 15000 LEDs? His laser dress and also his transformer dresses explore the creation of memorable appearance as they shapeshift through various fashion silhouettes of C20th fashion. But these dresses are not for the commercial world of fashion or for the everyday wear but explore new possibilities, blurring of boundaries and new ways of attracting attention as they are picked up by the trendhunters of this world.
Prof. Helen Storey?s Wonderland collaboration with chemist Tony Ryan also explores spectacle but of a slightly different nature in their dissolvable eco-fashion dresses. In fact, they are exploring spectacle and memorable but dissolving appearance within a performative context to convey to the world more serious messages about our world and the importance of closer fashion science connections. Interestingly, when I attended a joint presentation by Storey and Ryan, each was approaching the collaboration for very different reasons, Storey, to abandon the frivolous superficiality of fashion and become more serious, Ryan, to find a way to publicly display science and make visible what is not always apparent. These kind of public scientific displays are not new however but perhaps have not been explored so much recently. I recall my intrigue on hearing about the historic public display of experiment with electricity in the 1800?s when a young boy?s body was negatively charged so a
 s to attract thousands of positively charged feathers which would then cling to his suspended body?Suzanne Lee?s biocouture introduced earlier in these discussions clearly falls into this fashion-science fusion and perhaps in a more wearable sense (although still dissolvable in water) allows the presence of the physical and material artefact/garment to convey and tackle the more serious issues of our world under threat.

With regards,
Mich?le Danjoux
DAP Lab
http://www.danssansjoux.org
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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 19:32:45 +0100
From: Johannes Birringer <Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk>
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Wearable Technologies: or, dances with sound
Message-ID:
	<DF657B70CB20304DB745D84933F94B1E01A1C1F189 at v-exmb01.academic.windsor>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"

dear all

-- well this last posting by Mich?le is very thought-provoking, 
and makes me rethink some of responses i had to the "unspectacular" interactional performance with audio-wearables  (i had initially wanted to draw attention to other modes of reception and engagement, actually, namely the sounding of the garments-accoutrements and built in/attached sensors, but then got caught up in talking about the activiations or actuations of the sound via the gestureal and the touch. Now, obviously, there are some important sensorial processes (and cross modal perceptional tasks) as work, as i tried to connect the gestural (touch) or haptic to the sonic. 

Mich?le schreibt:
>>
In response to some of the things that have been discussed to date, I think now, in the context of wearable technologies (where we are considering the internal and external architectures and augmentation of the body) that it is perhaps less interesting to talk about the notion of the ?spectacle? where the main concern is to create memorable appearance (unless perhaps this is to convey message as discussed below in Wonderland example) and to turn our gaze more fully to ?Human-Garment Interactions? (David Bryson) and the importance of both physical and digital materiality where we look to augment the senses through a better understanding of both the technological, material and inter/intra psychological dimensions.
Textile and garment technologies now have the capabilities to augment the body both inside and out,...
>>

this notion of an inside augmentation I had not thought about, as in the rehearsals in our studio (on design and performance), I mostly work on the physical performance side and how the dancer or performer is processing both the physical kinesthetic experience (of working inside augmented realities and programming environments) and proprioceptive relations, as well as the "controller functions" that are given to the human body through worn sensors or remorte control devices but also amplificatory or bioradio devices that pick up internal "movement" (pulse, etc) and also operate on the thresholds.  In the work (and research projects surrounding it) of Emio Greco | PC, in the Netherlands, we find an interesting instance of a company showing their installation Double Skin/Double Mind (2007) to  open up their physical movement practice to audiences invited to learn or enact some of the principles of choreographic, generative processes  ? "inner" intentions as well as the outer sh
 ape of gestures and phrases. The company installed an interactive system in the foyers of theatres where Greco?s work was shown, inviting audience members to dance with the ?living archive? of Greco?s principles of movement, in front of the digital mirror created through video, computer notation graphics and other co-descriptions. 

I wonder, Mich?le, whether such augmentation (inside and outside) that you address could be displayed in such installations,  to let audiences and users explore intrapsychological dimensions, and how wearing and moving in an outfit/garment or an exoskeleton, and how interactional experiences affect / transform understanding and perceiving of inner/outer architectures?

I find it certainly quite telling that some programming in the performing arts, say the FuturePerfect festival in NY (www.futureperfectfestival.org), explicitly focusses on the perceptual psychology and immersion experiences of their audiences, (cf. the ZEE installation by Kurt Hentschl?ger  at the 3LD Art & Technology Center in 2009)

with regards
Johannes Birringer
DAP Lab
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap
http://www.danssansjoux.org

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