[-empyre-] Wearable Technologies and dresses/bodies in flux

[danielle wilde]

Much work in the areas of wearable technology has nothing to do with
fashion, as the commercial drivers and imperatives don't seem to allow for
anything terribly interesting in this space (as Van Dyke rather starkly
points out). I do not believe that this renders the space uninteresting.
Rather it opens up fertile ground for research - why pair technologies with
the body at all? what are the perceived benefits? How does it enhance life
and society in ways that are exciting and useful (without necessarily
meaning utilitarian) - how can body-worn technologies possibly contribute to
the kinds of futures we dream of? (rather than simply helping us to iterate
on the paradigms we currently operate in, with their known drawbacks and
limitations). How can they help us to dream?

Wearable technology research often has little relation to fashion discourse
(though this does not deny the validity and importance of fashion-related
research). Applications of outcomes are varied, as shown by some of the
examples cited throughout the month. Michèle raised some interesting medical
applications. Melinda just raised some additional examples in the realm of
art. My own approach (crossing a range of contexts) is to examine directly
how body-worn technologies might bring us back into contact with our most
visceral freedoms. Thinking about this can result in "exercise" technologies
such as the wiii etc. (which are not body-worn), but may also lead to more
fundamentally interesting spaces. My experiments in this area have not
always been successful.
hipDisk<http://www.daniellewilde.com/dw/hipdisk.html> is
a radical exception - it was a very quick experiment that continues to
incite interest from a broad cross-section of society. (it's the work around
which my other experiments continue to circulate). It has applications as a
performance "tool", but also as a learning "tool" in a number of different
contexts.

If we step beyond specific examples and discipline or body-specific
applications (or objections), I find it interesting to consider how thinking
about body-worn technologies might help us to dream the future of the
body-worn in relation to the evolving technium (Kelly, 2010). People seem
quite attached to pairing technologies with the body. Despite relatively
little advance over the years artists, scientists and other researchers
rather stubbornly continue to push in this area. Arthur C. Clarke posits
that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
(Clarke, 1984). I am interested in trying to address how we might support
the conception, development and evaluation of such 'magical' advanced
technologies - technologies that we can't quite imagine. I want to work out
how to leap beyond the adjacent possible, to move beyond constraints related
to technological limitations and commercial imperatives. My collaboration
with Kristina Andersen, the OWL
project<http://www.daniellewilde.com/dw/OWL.html>,
is directly concerned with these questions. Our approach mixes up art,
ethnography and magic.It is too early for us to draw conclusions about
whether or not we are creating a process for the emergence of 'sufficiently
advanced technology', but there are clear indications that we have created a
system for engaging users in strongly engaged moments of co-creation and
collaborative imagining of that which does not yet exist, filling the void
of their functionality with magic. (Wilde, Andersen, 2009 and 2010)

Condemning body-worn technologies because of their sluggish development, or
presumed alignment with fashion misses an opportunity to consider why people
continue to work in this area (considering the slow advances) and dream in
this area (as evidenced by aspects of this conversation as well as many
works, particularly in art contexts), as well as where this area might go
that is of real interest (in many contexts, including fashion - we all wear
clothes, and fashion research is no less valid than other research)

regards
danielle

refs:
Clarke, Arthur C. *Profiles of the Future*. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1984
Kelly, Kevin. *What Technology Wants*. New York: Viking (Penguin Group),
2010
Wilde, D., Anderson, K. . "Doing Things Backwards: Theowlproject." In *The
Australasian Computer Human Interaction Conference (OZCHI09)*, 357-360.
Melbourne, Australia: ACM Press, 2009.
Wilde, D., Andersen, K. . "Part Science Part Science Part Magic: Analysing
the Owl Outcomes." In *OZCHI10*, 188-191. Brisbane, Australia: ACM Press.,
2010.




On 25 May 2011 10:23, vandyk vandyk <vandykv at gmail.com> wrote:

> The discussion is missing the simple fact that the 'greater public' are not
> fooled by these bits of technology that have the potential to overtake the
> body and affect a colonization that would negatively affect their most
> visceral freedoms. So it is not fine that YOU wax lyrically or not about the
> associative or interpretative nature of technology on fashion. The fact is
> that fashion does not need such diversions, fashion is best left to consider
> the tropes that tie it to tradition, and perhaps deceiving what good fashion
> might do for humankind. Technology applied to a garment does nothing except
> turn the garment into technology, in turn these items become functional
> clothing, and are not fashion, unless they are deemed so by the greater
> public.
>
> Van Dyk
>
> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 3:41 PM, Johannes Birringer <
> Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> dear all
>>
>> these last few postings opened up the discussion even more, thanks to you
>> all,
>> starting with Michèle's  comments on neurological wiring and the
>> relational exchanges
>> or interactions between organisms and environment, followed by the
>> subsequent
>> elaborations by Susan Ryan on the subject of wearable technology and
>> social dimensions,
>> and by Sarah Kettley on what is worn and made visible (to whom) and what
>> is not made
>> visible  - in the latter case I was not entirely sure i understood what
>> you were
>> driving at (but you mentioned some research projects that i would have to
>> look up
>> and there was no time yet) ---   were you suggesting there is a difference
>> between
>> sharing and transmitting, and how does this concern the wearable or the
>> wearer
>> or relational/interactional social effect? it won't concern the "wearable"
>>  -  and here
>> i found indeed quite interesting all the cases that Susan mentioned of
>> newly developed
>> applications in the fashion or fashion/sports industry that have not
>> really caught on
>> or did not seem to interest people that much..
>>
>> >>
>> there is still little interest on the part of a significant public in
>> exploring wearable technology
>> in the way they actually dress. I wonder about this. Why is wearable
>> technology such an exclusive field?
>>  Perhaps most people have chosen to simply carry a single node—their
>> mobile phone/personality central.
>> When we are using our phones, I wonder, do we think we are invisible?
>> >>
>>
>>
>> the reference to Susan Kozel's work on mobile phones and social behavior
>> made sense (here
>> indeed Erving Goffman's social anthropology is marvelous, I mention his
>> writings on
>> "interaction rituals" a lot when we are building interactive environments
>> that
>> invite audience to participate gesturally or movement wise with "digital
>> objects"
>> or real objects that are connected into a computational interface scene -
>> and ultimately
>> the participants in installations, as in other places and occasions that
>> are
>> linked to social ritual action, also always participate with each other,
>> if there is more than one)
>>
>>  Kozel is very keen on developing the notion of social choreography;
>> I recently heard her speak at a dance tech
>> workshop on technologies/social circulations at MIT (April 2011:
>> http://web.mit.edu/slippage/dancetech/),
>> where she descrribed a new project she is developing in Sweden, called
>> "IntuiTweet", and it is an experiment with social networking
>> applications in improvised performance and communication (
>> http://medea.mah.se/2010/10/intuitweet/).
>> She does work with mobile phones and twitter messaging (stimulating
>> respondents to embody/enact a certain movement
>> or gesture or behave /respond a certain way and pass on to an
>> other......);
>> as I have also noticed more and more how these accessoires have affected
>> people's way of moving
>> and being in the world;  just an hour ago I crossed a rather ugly parking
>> lot near our science park, lost in thought;
>> and a young man walks towards me, and I note his warm, deeply loving
>> smile, as he moves his lips
>> and looks at me, and  I'm about to embrace him though I don't know him;
>> and then I realize he is talking to his lover, a string coming out of his
>> ear, his phone was
>> invisible, in some pocket, as he carried some books in his hands and under
>> the arm.  I try to feel embarrassed but actually don't, I just walk on and
>> marvel,
>> feeling happy for him.
>>
>> Not sure, though, whether the transmission devices are also 'statements' ,
>> and whether
>> the roles of the accessory change (>> the accessory has moved to become
>> the key garment
>> instead of the peripheral object>>)
>>
>> I suppose what you were arguing affects understandings of "dressing" or
>> dress and the functions
>> clothes [or accessories] have in the social realms and milieus, and the
>> issue of "control" over functions and visibility, indeed,
>> seems of considerable interest;  aesthetic performance (spectacle or less)
>> has other concerns here,
>> possibly, yet I was intrigued  by Susan's comments on fashion and
>> anti-fashion
>> and on:
>>
>> >>
>> and how we use garments to navigate a public domain and communicate a lot
>> more than just our personalities.
>> Dress may be one of the few creative things we all do on a daily basis,
>> although its level of creativity is sometimes overlooked
>> >>
>>
>>
>> might you expand on this, and look at what creative ranges are used, in
>> your opinion (or deliberately crossed out or
>> abused/non-used)? and how you see the issue of "control" of wearable
>> image/identity/effect on others/affect?
>> (Erin Manning in her Senselab in  Montréal held a lovely workshop a few
>> years ago, i think it was called "TRANS-GENÈSE : CORPS-MILIEU"
>> // HOUSING THE BODY, DRESSING THE ENVIRONMENT......, and they used the
>> verb 'emanate" in their announcements:
>> “what emanates from the body and what emanates from the architectural
>> surround intermixes” [Arakawa&Gins],
>> but what exactly are these emanations, how do you describe them, in
>> psychological/emotional terms, or in economic terms
>> or in terms of social relations that are virtually/tenuously or more
>> deliberately and even profoundly stitched and cross-patched?
>>
>>  Is this discussed [and by whom?, I don't see much debate in fashion
>> theory, nor in dance or performance studies
>> of the new media arts contexts?) in terms of gender, age?  social class
>> and tribe, in terms of race? and regarding sexually
>> explicit or implicit styles , deviancy, perversion?  the body in flux
>> (wondersome recent conference at Southampton:
>> http://www.solent.ac.uk/news/2011/thebodyinflux.aspx)?
>> the goth body?  and how mass media play across these categories now or how
>> fashion/advertising/entertainment
>> in the late age of perverse capitalism is a rather chaotic mess, no?
>>
>>
>> regards
>>
>> Johannes Birringer
>> dap-lab
>>
>>
>>
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>
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