Wearable Tech: Assignment 1
"Dress is everywhere. It is our primary interface with our changing environments and transmits and responds to emotions, experiences, and meanings." - Susan Elizabeth
Reading 1
"Garments of Paradise" by Susan Elizabeth
In this reading, Elizabeth provides a basic understanding of what wearable tech is and its explorative nature. Her overarching statement is that Wearable Tech makes the body "Culturally Visible". Wearable tech has various different usages:
1. Social Medium
2. Garments as a spectacle -> subjectifying the body
3. Interpretive Canvas
4. Garments that reveal emotions
5. Garments that reveal ones biomechanics
6. System of meaning
7. "Garment Composition" - > Wearables in the context of performance
8. HGI (Human Garment Interface)
9. Garments that enhance the sense of connectedness
10. Garments in relationship to space, place, and time
11. "Dress Acts" -> Hybrid forms of communications
12. Performative pre-verbal Discourse
Possibilities of WT:
1. "Disparate Histories"
2. "Wearable Computing"
3. "The Material Interface"
4. "The Critical Interface
5, "Augmented Dress"
There's a mentioning of this idea of the 'Control Society". This term was created by Gilles Deleuze that refers to the nomadic presence of WT. "Control society's lack of enclosure, its nomadic presence, is the very environment for dress acts."
Images:
Personal Idea 1: Earrings + Headphones
What if earring could double in functionality as headphones?
Would I utilize the bluetooth ability or have the wire act as a addition jewelry piece?
Would the bluetooth element be attachable so I don't have to recreate the entire earring itself?
Bluetooth = a wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances (using short-wavelength UHF radio waves in the ISM band from 2.4 to 2.485 GHz) from fixed and mobile devices, and building personal area networks (PANs).
Precedents:
1. https://www.chickadvisor.com/article/we-love-fridays-earphone-and-mp3-jewelry/
Reading 2
"You Are Cyborg" by Hari Kunzru
Cyborg feminism is a term i've neither seen or heard of! Before we break down that term, let's first consider what a cyborg is. When talking about a cyborg that key factor is that you must first think of individuals as being nodes of networks. Donna Haraway believes that the reality of modern life includes relationships between people and technology, but this relationship is so intimate that there's no longer a distinction of where humanity ends and technology begins. These hybrid networks are cyborgs.
Images:
Personal Idea 2: Identity + Life Protection - IDLP
I'm challenging my interest in masks and protest protection. What if there was a mask that protestors could wear that once it detects a harmful chemical the mask would shield the eyes and extend to cover the mouth. I imagine it being light weight, portable, and stylish. I can't help but think of Batman's mask, Iron Mans helmet, Captain America's mask, and Black Panther's Mask.
How would this mask engage or be activated?
How can it be both comfortable and not intrusive when covering eyes and mouth?
Reading 3
"Wearable Computing"
This reading breaks down the future and further combining of the human body and technology. This text describes, distinctly, the foundation of Human - Computer Interactions and uses pictures as examples.
Reading 4
"Cyborg Manifesto" - Donna Haraway
She breaks it DOWN in this piece. This piece heavily focuses on identity and the openness of it in relation to this emergence of human and technology.
