March 02, 2005
Joanna Berzowska
Second Skins
Joanna Berzowska was RISD's guest lecturer last night. She gave an impressive overview of both the 'wearables' field and of her own work. Amongst her many accomplishments, Berzowska is the founder of XS Labs (Extra-Soft Labs), "a design studio where we develop artifacts that are extra soft and react in weird ways to our bodies and our environments. We play, we experiment, we develop new technologies, we make art and we design products in the fields of physical computing, tangible media, electronic textiles and wearable computing." Their projects include Memory Rich Clothing, Inflatables/Deflatables, Animated Weavings, Addressable Textile Displays, Blazer:soundSleev and musical pants.
Wearables (also referred to as Electronic Textiles or Smart Fabrics) research is mostly funded and developed by the military, however there are many artists making "reactive clothes, second skins that can adapt to the environment and to the wearers, that can express aspects of their personalities, their needs and their desires, and represent aggregate social information."
Berzowska gave examples of other artists' work in the following three catgories: (1) Soundscapes, for example Saturday by Sabrina Raaf, and Sonic City; (2) Social Commentary, for example Lucy Orta's Refuge Wear and Medulla Intimata; and (3) Playful Garments, for example, Alison Lewis' Closer and Elise Co's Puddle Jumper. Berzowska stressed that practitioners need to consider why we want our garments to be electronic, and be mindful of their misuse (surveillance) as well as the environmental ramifications of mass producing such objects: "The killer app for wearable computing is to convey personal identity information. This is called fashion and it is mostly visual." (Berzowska). [Related]
Read ISEA Fashion (Wearable Computing) Report by Scott Rettberg.
Posted by jo at March 2, 2005 03:57 PM
