V2_ Knowledgebase

Every object has a skin. Thick or thin, smooth or rough, porous or impermeable, the skin is the line between the hidden inside and the outside we experience. Skin: Surface, Substance, and Design presents products, furniture, fashion, architecture, and media that are expanding the limits of what we understand as surface. Reflecting the convergence of natural and artificial life, this provocative and stimulating book shows how enhanced and simulated skins appear everywhere in our contemporary world. Designers today manipulate the relationship between the inside and outside of objects, garments, and buildings, creating skins that both reveal and conceal, skins that have depth and complexity as well as their own behaviors and identities.

Kristin Neidlinger aka Slim Avocado is an experience designer focused on the Sensory Computer Interface [SCI]. She aspires to craft phenomenal technology to enhance and expand physical embodiment. kristin is a classically trained ballerina with a background in physical therapies and holds an MFA in Interactive Design. Currently, she works with a team of artists and engineers at SENSOREE an art tech design lab creating therapeutic bio.media, body architecture, sensitive technology, interactive installations, and robot clothes.

The nightgown reacts to high voice levels and was made as a result of the 56 day performance. The nightgown illustrates increased sensitivity within the relationship. The microphone, located near the left shoulder of the gown, requires a loud noise to trigger the garment. The gown will remained ëstressedí if activated frequently.

The Studio lab aims at integrating multidisciplinary knowledge on user, technology, and the product usage context. Building working prototypes that are rich in experiential quality and design tools is essential to the research approach. Prototypes with design variables are tested in real environments, in an iterative research through design cycle. Results from user experience testing leads to design knowledge and refinement of research issues.

Over the last ten years TED has been developing a set of practice-based sustainable design strategies that assist designers in creating textiles that have a reduced impact on the environment.

Alexander Reeder creates interactive garments, accessories and perfume. He works to enable through projects such as Sophie's Pet, enhance with Dream Jammies and Butterfly Dress, and facilitate with S Ring. Alex explores performative elements of interactive garments with Touched By Strangers.

Hussein Chalayanís collection consist of dresses that automatically transformed in shape and style. Zippers closed, cloth gathered, and hemlines roseñall without human assistance. Beneath each modelís skirt was a computer system designed by the London-based engineering and concept-creation firm 2D3D.

Unravel: the SIGGRAPH2006 Fashion Show presents a runway show of innovative and experimental works in computational and conceptual couture, fashion with a social agenda, science-inspired form, and new technologies of material fabrication. Unravel brings together the work of designers and artists from the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia who are seeking to redefine the notion of ‘wearable.’ In the increasingly mobile nature of contemporary life, it has become important to contemplate how the devices we carry and the garments we wear converge into a ‘secondary skin’ which function as an extension of ourselves, in both ability and perception. By using fashion, a medium which has always been associated with self-expression and personal identity, these designers seek to demonstrate how the use (or misuse) of technology and its modes of production have the power to stimulate, delight, and inspire in ways as yet untapped in the fashion world. Gone are the stereotypical bulky cyborg devices; what emerged are garments of beauty, subtlety and elegance in form. Some bring to light important social issues — redefining our notions of personal space, networked environments, and issues of privacy and protection. Others relish in pure delight, reminding us how technology also has the power to enhance our personal relationships and celebrate fantasy and play as part of the human condition.

Regine Debatty studied Classics in Belgium and England, worked as a teacher of Latin and ancient Greek, then moved to media, working as a documentary director for the Belgian national TV, as a reporter for the radio Onda Cero in Spain then as a consultant for the MEDIA programme of the European Commission in Italy. She now writes about the intersection between art, design and technology on her blog we-make-money-not-art.com as well as on several European design and art magazines. She curates art shows and speaks at conferences and festivals about the way artists, hackers and interaction designers (mis)use technology.

-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.

The World of Wearable Art Awards Show is a series of six spectacular shows combining choreography, sound and light as a backdrop to the display of amazing garments. An international line-up of top artists and designers put their creations on show in this iconic event, introducing the latest in imaginative couture and accessories. Extraordinary lighting and special effects heighten the sense of drama in each of the two-hour shows. These theatrical experiences attract up-and-coming designers, celebrities, hosts of the fashion-conscious, and others wishing to witness the cutting edge of the wearable art scene.

Artist, designer and researcher Dr. Zane Berzina, originally from Latvia, is involved in interdisciplinary projects across the fields of science, technology, design and art. Her studio practice and research evolves around responsive, active and interactive textiles, soft technologies, new materials and processes as well as biomimetic practices.