Re: [-empyre-] Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Ventures”
melinda, I'm happy to respond, but I'm not sure I understand your question - are you asking what terminologies I use to describe practices related to the concept of second skin? can you possibly clarify a little? many thanks danielle On 25 May 2011 23:17, Melinda Rackham meli...@subtle.net wrote: hi all, nice to see so many colleague so in one discussion and thanks for your posts! Hope to catch up with many in Istanbul in September. I hadnt realized it was so late in the month already and ive been wanting to jump in and ask a few questions-- particularly on the snippets below.. the concept of the second skin idea is one close to my interests- not just as a wearable skin, an augmentation, a spectacle or a projection- and *danielle, i'd like to hear what more specific terminologies you are using to describe these practices..* - but as a transference/shift/energetic placement/emmanance of the self or selves , at once somewhere and elsewhere, be that in material architectural public space, virtual electronic public space, emotional sensory space, or the space of vibrational energetic connection. if the skin is sense organ shifting between internal and external spaces, how do wearables transfer sensory information back into the bodies they cling to? perhaps the lack up uptake susan refers to has something to do with their functionality of displaying external signals rather than facilitate a two way dialogue.. making them producers of spectacle rather than transactional devices.. oh and on the practical side -bulky batteries. bio wearables were mentioned early in the discussion but disappeared and I am thinking back to Mitchells Whitelaws wonderful book MetaCreation: art and artificial life- and the way he describes the coevolution of sensing organs - the receivers and the generators needing to be precisely matched to function - the correct codec for coding and decoding to appear simultaneously.. i'm imagining a future of wearables that work on electrodermal activity, that feed both off and back into the body and the bodies, environments and networks around them - and i'm DEFINITELY NOT thinking along the lines of the old father of cybersex stahl stenslie's full-body, tele-tactile communication system -cyberSM of 1993. We should have come a long way in this area in 20 years -- but have we? warmest flu addled regards, Melinda Dr Melinda Rackham Contemporary Artforms Curator Partner Curator Royal Institution of Australia Adjunct Professor RMIT University On 06/05/2011, at 6:39 AM, Janis Jefferies wrote: Fashion and wearable technology have as their departure point the ability to act as second skins interfaces to a world in which we live and breathe and listen through the entire epidermis as Sabine Seymour describes at the the beginning of this text. On 07/05/2011, at 8:21 PM, danielle wilde wrote: 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. On 11/05/2011, at 7:16 AM, Susan Ryan wrote: And performances have both insides (the phenomenology of wearing something) and outsides. How do wearable technologies fit into that history of everyday performativity that fashion itself has written? and On 18/05/2011, I also wonder if the general lack of adventurousness in wearable technology means we are still just reticent to grant the status of complex discourse to dress. On 25/05/2011, at 5:11 AM, Johannes Birringer wrote: “what emanates from the body and what emanates from the architectural surround intermixes” [ArakawaGins], 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? ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Ventures”
Melinda (and everyone else), I am sorry to have let my participation lapse... between grading and a lot of other obligations, I have dropped out for a while. BUT, I am really interested in this month's topic and have been quite fascinated by what I have read so far. I want to respond to Melinda's question: i'm imagining a future of wearables that work on electrodermal activity, that feed both off and back into the body and the bodies, environments and networks around them - and i'm DEFINITELY NOT thinking along the lines of the old father of cybersex stahl stenslie's full-body, tele-tactile communication system -cyberSM of 1993. We should have come a long way in this area in 20 years -- but have we? I think that there is a good question about the spectacular way in which we have imagined wearable technology in the past, and the way it actually looks once said technology is incorporated into being. I think that Heidegger's discussion of dwelling and being are useful here. I recall in my own dissertation research on smart houses, I was dealing with similar issues: The difference between the spectacular futurism of the previous cultural imaginary and the more modest futurisms of the present. Leaning on Foucault's Technologies of the Self, think the true full-body, tele-tactile system would be realized primarily in psychic terms. That the apparatus itself could be shrunken and minimalized might, perhaps, be the sign of its centrality. When we talk about SM as a sort of fantasy role-play, it seems to lend itself to a certain amount of setting, staging, costuming, and external markers that seem to exist precisely to shore up the fantasy in the absence of real sadism/masochism. When we talk of truly sadistic behavior, not as a role-play, it usually presents itself as its opposite. For instance, abuse often marked by elaborate performances of domestic harmony? So, we might be talking about the difference between fantasies about technology that we wish could release us from responsibility for our actions AND/OR extend our power and real technologies that could conceivably do the inverse rob us of responsibility (via compulsory connectivity) AND/OR hold us accountable (via surveillance). While a house is very different from a jumpsuit in a certain sense, as these objects relate to our being, our presentation in the world, and the memory we manage... they are quite similar. So, maybe we haven't come a long way, except in the sense that we have to live with the actual technologies, rather than merely signify them through fashion. A second useful thing to think about, and pardon me if I am inadvertently repeating a point made earlier in the month, is that Bourdieu's discussion of the habitus. Here you have a term for the person's immediate region of consciousness which can be expressed through dress, posture, voice, vocabulary, identity, thought. I am particularly keen on seeing the resonance between wearable technology and more archaic notions of habitus, particularly the religious habit, which is a garment that denotes a way of being. BUT it also habituates the individual towards a mode of being. In this sense, the wearable technology departs from sensory signification and migrates more towards modifying action and interaction (which is what clothing has done historically), but does so with a programmed memory and more deeply codified structure. In other words, the interactions do not carry the same sort of performative character that old cloths might have required to legitimate their function (i.e. a police uniform requires a certain performance of virtual authority, while the gun and billyclub perform a sort of ultimate actual authority). I am still trying to creep through the month's messages. But this represents the half-baked form of my thinking on what I have read so far. I am hoping that whoever makes it to Istanbul might want to sit down and talk about this stuff face to face. Peace! Davin ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Ventures
hi all, nice to see so many colleague so in one discussion and thanks for your posts! Hope to catch up with many in Istanbul in September. I hadnt realized it was so late in the month already and ive been wanting to jump in and ask a few questions-- particularly on the snippets below.. the concept of the second skin idea is one close to my interests- not just as a wearable skin, an augmentation, a spectacle or a projection- and danielle, i'd like to hear what more specific terminologies you are using to describe these practices.. - but as a transference/shift/energetic placement/emmanance of the self or selves , at once somewhere and elsewhere, be that in material architectural public space, virtual electronic public space, emotional sensory space, or the space of vibrational energetic connection. if the skin is sense organ shifting between internal and external spaces, how do wearables transfer sensory information back into the bodies they cling to? perhaps the lack up uptake susan refers to has something to do with their functionality of displaying external signals rather than facilitate a two way dialogue.. making them producers of spectacle rather than transactional devices.. oh and on the practical side -bulky batteries. bio wearables were mentioned early in the discussion but disappeared and I am thinking back to Mitchells Whitelaws wonderful book MetaCreation: art and artificial life- and the way he describes the coevolution of sensing organs - the receivers and the generators needing to be precisely matched to function - the correct codec for coding and decoding to appear simultaneously.. i'm imagining a future of wearables that work on electrodermal activity, that feed both off and back into the body and the bodies, environments and networks around them - and i'm DEFINITELY NOT thinking along the lines of the old father of cybersex stahl stenslie's full-body, tele-tactile communication system -cyberSM of 1993. We should have come a long way in this area in 20 years -- but have we? warmest flu addled regards, Melinda Dr Melinda Rackham Contemporary Artforms Curator Partner Curator Royal Institution of Australia Adjunct Professor RMIT University On 06/05/2011, at 6:39 AM, Janis Jefferies wrote: Fashion and wearable technology have as their departure point the ability to act as second skins interfaces to a world in which we live and breathe and listen through the entire epidermis as Sabine Seymour describes at the the beginning of this text. On 07/05/2011, at 8:21 PM, danielle wilde wrote: 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. On 11/05/2011, at 7:16 AM, Susan Ryan wrote: And performances have both insides (the phenomenology of wearing something) and outsides. How do wearable technologies fit into that history of everyday performativity that fashion itself has written? and On 18/05/2011, I also wonder if the general lack of adventurousness in wearable technology means we are still just reticent to grant the status of complex discourse to dress. On 25/05/2011, at 5:11 AM, Johannes Birringer wrote: “what emanates from the body and what emanates from the architectural surround intermixes” [ArakawaGins], 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? ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
