i just saw this post today:
http://www.flytip.com/blog/?p=1531
i'm looking to compile resources for wearables + wearable tech.
is there a wearables group/focus on here?
anyone working with wearables?
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Hi Jaki,
I work with wearables and can suggest a couple of links - XS Labs at http://www.xslabs.net/ and Moondial at http://www.moondial.com/. Fashioning Technology by Syuzi Pakhchyan is an easy DIY way in to some projects - see http://www.sparklab.la/.
My own work is more informed by contemporary jewellery as a discipline and I'm interested in design methodologies, particularly in craft theory. My thesis is on Scribd at http://www.scribd.com/people/view/1478920-sarahkettley, and describes the development of a suite of wirelessly networked jewellery.
Otherwise, so much to learn. I am with Nottingham Trent's Technical Textiles research project tat the moment and linking with performance and dance is definitely something we want to pursue.
and you might be interested in a new piece that just went up (and was recently premiered first in France, I think) at the CYNETart 2008 festival in Dresden Hellerau, the choreographic-installation "passage" by the Canadian group kondition pluriel. It is a work that links dancer (wearing a "wearable" sensorial costume with several sensors) to environment (where the outputs and feedbacks are visualized and sonified) to visitors/audiences invited into the space and into direct physical contact with the performer.
I quote from the program (i was invited to host a conversation with media artist/programmer Martin Kusch, who co-directs kondition pluriel along with Marie-Claude Poulin) - since this might interest others who work in this hybrid design field of mixing dance and installation as well as audioviosual reactive / augmented environments with senors technologies worn and acticated by performance in participation with visitors:
(this is taken from the CYNET website which directs you to our forum, which was called
PostMe New ID)
A hybrid of interactive installation and performance artistic direction: Martin Kusch, Marie-Claude Poulin, choreography: Marie-Claude Poulin, contributions to movement research: Benoît Lachambre, Dominique Porte, media environment/visual performance: Martin Kusch, composition and sound performance: Alexandre St-Onge, dramaturgy: Armando Menicacci, dance/performance: Catherine Tardif, installation: Martin Kusch in collaboration with Éric Belley, costumes: Linda Brunelle, lighting and technical direction: Éric Belley, sensor system: Technology Playgroup, max
consultant: Alexandre Burton
With the support of: Canada Council for the Arts (CAC), Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec (CALQ), Conseil des Arts de Montréal (CAM) sowie and Vertretung der Regierung von Québec, Berlin.
A performance-installation project with one dancer, created by the performance production group kondition pluriel. It is a practical research into the possibilities created by blurring the boundaries between active performers and passive spectators, and exploring varying states of intimacy and proximity, with the goal of creating an artwork that oscillates between interactive installation and performance. The project incorporates dance performance, choreography, improvisation and a constantly evolving, dynamic and responsive media environment. This media platform is generated by continuous live input from multiple users – the spectators – via a series of wireless sensors attached and distributed both on the costume of a dancer/performer, and throughout the installation environment.
The mixed format of passage, an inbetween of interactive media design, dance performance and improvisation, creates a new model of dance-performance, which triggers social interaction, questions the spectator on his relationship to his own body, addresses his quality of listening and invites and stimulates the spectator to participate in a playful experience where he finds himself at once object and subject.
***************
i will probably write a review of the installation soon, and then post here or on the dance tech net. ciao.
my del.icio.us links tagged wearables are here. there's probably a lot of crossover with doug's links so apologies for the obsolescence.
and the site I'm thinking of making would be a moderated wiki, searchable through technology, input, output (light, sound, shape, colour change...), and body part. please feel free to let me know if you think this is of interest (and if you or people you know would be willing to contribute)
Hi Danielle
I'm a dance artist based in Leeds, UK
I've just become a member of dance-tech because I'm interested in site specific dance performance and I'm working on an idea of making a performance using wearable light, projecting lights, lasers, Led light. My interested is to use the light to create dynamics on space, sculpture image, and as I'll use a dark outside space my interest is to experiment on the relations between the projecting lights coming from the body and the elements and space around.
I'm doing research about wearable light,led light and laser pointer;
the thing is that I would like the performers be able to control all the lighting by them self with easy control.
As this is a project at its early stage I'm looking for suggestions, advices as well as contributions and collaborations.
please let me know any kind of thoughts and suggestions.
I've just become a member of dance-tech and my focus is wearables. I'm half-way through a phd looking at how technology might be paired with the body to poeticise experience and what this might even mean. some of my work can be seen here: daniellewilde.com more will be posted soon.
I delivered a talk about my research on Monday, that will be podcast in the next week or so, that I think/hope will be of interest - I provide quite a broad survey of the field of wearables, to provide a context for my investigation, then go on to discuss some of my work, which includes a series of experiments (relevant to this discussion) called Light Arrays, that extend the body with light (2 versions - 1 with lasers and 1 with LEDs). How this work differs to Chalayan/Waldemeyer's work with LEDs and Lasers is that his/their work moves on the body but it doesn't actually reflect the dynamic of the moving body. as is common in fashion design, the body in chalayan/Waldemeyer's work is a support for the system/garment; whereas in the Light Arrays the lights sit perpendicular to the body (the spine; the limbs; different articulations; etc - it's a modular system), so provide insight into how our body shifts and changes as it moves, and how our gestures touch space. amongst other things the Light Arrays provide a bridge between visual perception and pro-prioception. The project is still in a highly experimental/exploratory stage but the outcomes to date have been incredibly rich. I'll be putting something on my website soon about it - for the moment there's a workshop publication of the proposed idea here (presented at Pervasive Expression in Sydney in May this year), which touches on where the idea comes from. Otherwise I'll let you know when the podcast of the talk is up and when my site gets updated.
re publications:
Springer just published a book called Fashionable Technology, edited by Sabine Seymour, which provides a "compact" survey of the field. It's not at all focused on performance, it's focused on "the intersection of design, fashion, science and technology". While there are no real surprises in there for people familiar with the field, I think it's a useful reference as it pulls a lot of work together and it has a reasonable resources section.
and I've been thinking of making an interactive site that can act as a dynamic (updatable) resource for wearable and body-centric technology because, while all of this stuff is online it's disparate and rarely easily searchable, so I think the need exists. Also, while books are important they are fixed in time and it's such a dynamic field.
for info, my background is physical performance, design for theatre and architecture, and interaction design (RCA, London). I'm currently based at Monash University in Melbourne, in the faculty of art and design, and at the CSIRO division of textile and fibre technology
Hi! I have done some work with a designer that wove LED's into her costumes. And I'm interested in incorporating sensors into clothing for performance...
interesting. you wouldn't be talking of Barbara Layne (Montreal, Hexagram)? - she had designed a shirt/pullover a couple, or three, years ago, which she showed to me at a meeting we had at SF in Vancouver, it was a very intresting piece she had designed for Yacov Sharir to dance/choreograph with. I suppose LED became interesting to some industrial manufacturer/design firms (Philips) as well, and probably will become more and more widespread.
I haven't seen much good use made of this integrated technology in performance though. And that might the question really, regarding all wearables, what are we using them for, in regard to aesthetics of performance, and performance content, and/or interactive design (for example between exhibition and receicing audience or participating audience). Once you incorporate, then what. Or rather, I'd suggest all these questions need to come before integrating "technology" or intelligence into clothes or accessories.
accelerometers are accessories, to some extent, aren't they?
thanks for the reference, i just came across your post.
I am not sure that there is a wearables focus group. Might be interesting to have one.
I wouldn't say that my lab in London specializes in wearables, but we like to work with them and design them (meaning we integrate off the shelf sensors into our garments and into wearing concepts for performance and for real time composition), and since this only recently (over the past two, three years) became an issue to challenge dance and performance (in fashion it's been around slightly longer but not necessary always fully developed, even if Chalayan and others designed interesting garments), there is much growth expected in this area of research.... especially if "wearable" extends to all sorts of re-engineered tools (and also beyond the electro-acoustic as it was used already 10, 15 years ago by AudioGruppe);
perhaps the phenomenon of the wearables (and what might happen with Wii and non-direct interfaces now) could be addressed in the digital tools group, which i visite dsome time ago when talk happened on digital puppetry.
Woodhead Publishing House in Cambridge is preparing a new book on wearables that is coming out this year.
Replies
I work with wearables and can suggest a couple of links - XS Labs at http://www.xslabs.net/ and Moondial at http://www.moondial.com/. Fashioning Technology by Syuzi Pakhchyan is an easy DIY way in to some projects - see http://www.sparklab.la/.
My own work is more informed by contemporary jewellery as a discipline and I'm interested in design methodologies, particularly in craft theory. My thesis is on Scribd at http://www.scribd.com/people/view/1478920-sarahkettley, and describes the development of a suite of wirelessly networked jewellery.
Otherwise, so much to learn. I am with Nottingham Trent's Technical Textiles research project tat the moment and linking with performance and dance is definitely something we want to pursue.
nice to read this/Sarah/
and you might be interested in a new piece that just went up (and was recently premiered first in France, I think) at the CYNETart 2008 festival in Dresden Hellerau, the choreographic-installation "passage" by the Canadian group kondition pluriel. It is a work that links dancer (wearing a "wearable" sensorial costume with several sensors) to environment (where the outputs and feedbacks are visualized and sonified) to visitors/audiences invited into the space and into direct physical contact with the performer.
I quote from the program (i was invited to host a conversation with media artist/programmer Martin Kusch, who co-directs kondition pluriel along with Marie-Claude Poulin) - since this might interest others who work in this hybrid design field of mixing dance and installation as well as audioviosual reactive / augmented environments with senors technologies worn and acticated by performance in participation with visitors:
(this is taken from the CYNET website which directs you to our forum, which was called
PostMe New ID)
MARIE-CLAUDE POULIN
& MARTIN KUSCH
2007 — kondition pluriel
A hybrid of interactive installation and performance artistic direction: Martin Kusch, Marie-Claude Poulin, choreography: Marie-Claude Poulin, contributions to movement research: Benoît Lachambre, Dominique Porte, media environment/visual performance: Martin Kusch, composition and sound performance: Alexandre St-Onge, dramaturgy: Armando Menicacci, dance/performance: Catherine Tardif, installation: Martin Kusch in collaboration with Éric Belley, costumes: Linda Brunelle, lighting and technical direction: Éric Belley, sensor system: Technology Playgroup, max
consultant: Alexandre Burton
With the support of: Canada Council for the Arts (CAC), Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec (CALQ), Conseil des Arts de Montréal (CAM) sowie and Vertretung der Regierung von Québec, Berlin.
A performance-installation project with one dancer, created by the performance production group kondition pluriel. It is a practical research into the possibilities created by blurring the boundaries between active performers and passive spectators, and exploring varying states of intimacy and proximity, with the goal of creating an artwork that oscillates between interactive installation and performance. The project incorporates dance performance, choreography, improvisation and a constantly evolving, dynamic and responsive media environment. This media platform is generated by continuous live input from multiple users – the spectators – via a series of wireless sensors attached and distributed both on the costume of a dancer/performer, and throughout the installation environment.
The mixed format of passage, an inbetween of interactive media design, dance performance and improvisation, creates a new model of dance-performance, which triggers social interaction, questions the spectator on his relationship to his own body, addresses his quality of listening and invites and stimulates the spectator to participate in a playful experience where he finds himself at once object and subject.
***************
i will probably write a review of the installation soon, and then post here or on the dance tech net. ciao.
my del.icio.us links tagged wearables are here. there's probably a lot of crossover with doug's links so apologies for the obsolescence.
and the site I'm thinking of making would be a moderated wiki, searchable through technology, input, output (light, sound, shape, colour change...), and body part. please feel free to let me know if you think this is of interest (and if you or people you know would be willing to contribute)
danielle
I'm a dance artist based in Leeds, UK
I've just become a member of dance-tech because I'm interested in site specific dance performance and I'm working on an idea of making a performance using wearable light, projecting lights, lasers, Led light. My interested is to use the light to create dynamics on space, sculpture image, and as I'll use a dark outside space my interest is to experiment on the relations between the projecting lights coming from the body and the elements and space around.
I'm doing research about wearable light,led light and laser pointer;
the thing is that I would like the performers be able to control all the lighting by them self with easy control.
As this is a project at its early stage I'm looking for suggestions, advices as well as contributions and collaborations.
please let me know any kind of thoughts and suggestions.
Best
Vanessa
I delivered a talk about my research on Monday, that will be podcast in the next week or so, that I think/hope will be of interest - I provide quite a broad survey of the field of wearables, to provide a context for my investigation, then go on to discuss some of my work, which includes a series of experiments (relevant to this discussion) called Light Arrays, that extend the body with light (2 versions - 1 with lasers and 1 with LEDs). How this work differs to Chalayan/Waldemeyer's work with LEDs and Lasers is that his/their work moves on the body but it doesn't actually reflect the dynamic of the moving body. as is common in fashion design, the body in chalayan/Waldemeyer's work is a support for the system/garment; whereas in the Light Arrays the lights sit perpendicular to the body (the spine; the limbs; different articulations; etc - it's a modular system), so provide insight into how our body shifts and changes as it moves, and how our gestures touch space. amongst other things the Light Arrays provide a bridge between visual perception and pro-prioception. The project is still in a highly experimental/exploratory stage but the outcomes to date have been incredibly rich. I'll be putting something on my website soon about it - for the moment there's a workshop publication of the proposed idea here (presented at Pervasive Expression in Sydney in May this year), which touches on where the idea comes from. Otherwise I'll let you know when the podcast of the talk is up and when my site gets updated.
re publications:
Springer just published a book called Fashionable Technology, edited by Sabine Seymour, which provides a "compact" survey of the field. It's not at all focused on performance, it's focused on "the intersection of design, fashion, science and technology". While there are no real surprises in there for people familiar with the field, I think it's a useful reference as it pulls a lot of work together and it has a reasonable resources section.
and I've been thinking of making an interactive site that can act as a dynamic (updatable) resource for wearable and body-centric technology because, while all of this stuff is online it's disparate and rarely easily searchable, so I think the need exists. Also, while books are important they are fixed in time and it's such a dynamic field.
for info, my background is physical performance, design for theatre and architecture, and interaction design (RCA, London). I'm currently based at Monash University in Melbourne, in the faculty of art and design, and at the CSIRO division of textile and fibre technology
danielle
I've been compiling wearable resources in my del.icio.us bookmarks. Here's link to "wearables" tag.
bambi2.jpg
interesting. you wouldn't be talking of Barbara Layne (Montreal, Hexagram)? - she had designed a shirt/pullover a couple, or three, years ago, which she showed to me at a meeting we had at SF in Vancouver, it was a very intresting piece she had designed for Yacov Sharir to dance/choreograph with. I suppose LED became interesting to some industrial manufacturer/design firms (Philips) as well, and probably will become more and more widespread.
I haven't seen much good use made of this integrated technology in performance though. And that might the question really, regarding all wearables, what are we using them for, in regard to aesthetics of performance, and performance content, and/or interactive design (for example between exhibition and receicing audience or participating audience). Once you incorporate, then what. Or rather, I'd suggest all these questions need to come before integrating "technology" or intelligence into clothes or accessories.
accelerometers are accessories, to some extent, aren't they?
regards
Johannes
thanks for the reference, i just came across your post.
I am not sure that there is a wearables focus group. Might be interesting to have one.
I wouldn't say that my lab in London specializes in wearables, but we like to work with them and design them (meaning we integrate off the shelf sensors into our garments and into wearing concepts for performance and for real time composition), and since this only recently (over the past two, three years) became an issue to challenge dance and performance (in fashion it's been around slightly longer but not necessary always fully developed, even if Chalayan and others designed interesting garments), there is much growth expected in this area of research.... especially if "wearable" extends to all sorts of re-engineered tools (and also beyond the electro-acoustic as it was used already 10, 15 years ago by AudioGruppe);
perhaps the phenomenon of the wearables (and what might happen with Wii and non-direct interfaces now) could be addressed in the digital tools group, which i visite dsome time ago when talk happened on digital puppetry.
Woodhead Publishing House in Cambridge is preparing a new book on wearables that is coming out this year.
regards
Johannes Birringer