V2_ Knowledgebase

Ayah Bdeir is an artist, engineer and interaction designer. She graduated from the MIT Media Lab with a Masters of Media Arts and Sciences after studying Computer & Communication Engineering and Sociology in the American University of Beirut. She has worked as a researcher and interaction designer in Lebanon and New York, in artist spaces and design firms, with a brief interruption to work in a financial services firm in New York.

Acting as creative artists and researchers, students learn how to advance the state of the art of current interface technologies and applications. Through interdisciplinary research and team work, they also develop new aspects of interface design including its cultural and social applications. The themes elaborated under the Master's programme in relation to interactive technologies include Interactive Environments, Interactive Art, Ubiquitous Computing, game design, VR and MR environments, Sound Art, Media Art, Web-Art, Software Art, HCI research and interaction design.

LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre is an exhibition centre for art, science, technology and advanced visual industries. But it is also a venue for artistic and technological production, research and training; and for the dissemination of new forms of art and industrial creation. To fulfil these goals, laboral will be a space for exchange between different art disciplines; a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary centre and a dynamic environment for creators / works / researchers / teachers / audiences.

Material Sense is a dynamic organisation linking designers, researchers and cutting-edge companies in an active network. By sharing expertise and collaborating in the exploration of the properties of materials, new products and new ways of utilizing materials are created. Material Sense lobbies for a materials-oriented design and development of products.

MIThril is a next-generation wearables research platform developed by researchers at the MIT Media Lab. The goal of the MIThril project is the development and prototyping of new techniques of human-computer interaction for body-worn applications. Through the application of human factors, machine learning, hardware engineering, and software engineering, the MIThril team is constructing a new kind of computing environment and developing prototype applications for health, communications, and just-in-time information delivery

Minoru Fujimoto was born in Kobe on August 9, 1983. He is a Research Associate at Tokyo University of Technology in Japan. He received the B.Eng., M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from Kobe University in 2007, 2009 and 2012, respectively. He is a dancer and researcher. His research interests include wearable computing, entertainment computing and performance art. He has developed some interactive systems for dance performance.

The Textile Futures Research Group comprises researchers across Chelsea College of Art and Design, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London College of Fashion, at the University of the Arts London.

The Patchingzone is a transdisciplinary laboratory for innovation where Master, doctor, post-doc students and professionals from different backgrounds create meaningful content. In our laboratories the students and researchers work together, supervised by experts, on commissions with creative use of high-tech materials, digital media and / or information technology.

The Tampere University of Technology (TUT) Department of Electronics has conducted research in wearable technology since 1997. The TUT Kankaanp‰‰ Unit, established in 2003, is a research unit specialized in wearable technology. It is a part of a wearable technology competence center located in Kankaanp‰‰, Finland. The Kankaanp‰‰ Unitís personnel are very interdisciplinary and include researchers from electronics, material technology and textile technology background. This enables us to conduct extensive research on different aspects of wearable technology and quickly adapt information and new results from various disciplines.

Valerie Lamontagne is a Montreal-based performance and digital media artist, freelance art critic and independent curator. She received an MFA from Concordia University (Montreal) where she presently teaches in Design and Computation Arts and she is a co-founder of the media arts collective MobileGaze. She is presently a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University with the Topological Media Lab investigating "Relational and Ubiquitous Performance Art".

-Wifi jacket: While I was orignally working with basic light stripes, I ultimately decided to integrate them with a flower motif. This design choice was made to recount the age old story of borrowing from the environment to decorate garments - think floral and animal print patterns. Since Wi-Fi is so prevalent in the environment now, I thought it would be interesting to integrate this representation of a man-made part of our environment into a garment in that same way. In the end design, flowers referencing our natural environment are juxtaposed with technology from the synthetic environment. -'Intimate Controllers' is a platform where video games are played by couples touching each other. The platform consists of two controllers, a bra for the female player and boxer shorts for the male player. Each controller is embedded with 6 sensors placed with varying degrees of intimacy in relation to the body part with which they correspond. Players must pass game levels together and in doing so, game play results in increasingly intimate positioning. The goal of this project was to research and create objects that challenge the traditional notions and orientation of video game play.