Piem Wirtz presented Protei together with naval architect Alvaro Takiuti at the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands in Wageningen on a day about natural propulsion. The day was concluded with a guided tour to the MARIN facilities and the student sailing contest which was held the same day as the seminar.
MARIN has for eighty years been involved in optimizing hull forms
to reduce resistance and fuel consumption. There is an emphasis on reducing emissions
and the impact on the environment. According to MARIN a radical change in propulsion
sources could (well, should) be considered as alternative to engine driven ships. This is natural propulsion, and Protei is an interesting example of that – as it can sail semi-autonomously upwind.
More at: www.marin.nl/web/Events/Natural-Propulsion-Seminar.htm
What is a ‘wearable’? We define it as 'something designed to fit the body and to stay there when you are not actively holding it' (as opposed to ‘portables’). The BODY is an essential component, a structure to hold it up, and to make a wearable ‘work’.
Statement: Wearables are intended to DO something.
This provokes the very important question: does it work?? And if not, did it fail as a wearable? (“do” can be both input and output. Input is things like energy harvesting, CO2 sensing, solar panels. Output relates to sound, light, visual change). Remark on the side, to test the definition: Is a piece of cloth still considered wearable technology if you put hundreds of LED’s on it, without including the battery? How is this different from a garment studded with Swarovski crystals?
In this context, performance is defined as an action or process of accomplishing a task, which sorts an effect to a human perceiver. How does performance relate to interaction and participation? KEYWORD: experience. Important: for who is the experience?
Performative wearables are pieces of clothing that are amplifying the body, adding a question of scale or adding layers of mediation.
Statement: If it is not mainstream, it is called a wearable.
A wearable is performative if some sort of transition/transformation is taking place, during a live demonstration. The notion of ‘live demonstration’ leaves us with another issue: wearables often have multiple lives. Real time (live) demonstration is documented by video registration and professional photography, and end up being displayed in several media. Some wearables are famous as icons; most people only get to know them through visual documentation. The audience never experiences the pieces up close. Many wearables look great on pictures, but do not live up to the expectations in real life.
Question: can a wearable piece still have performative quality if it is represented on video or paper?
People like to see ‘how it works’. If you demo a work live, it can add to the appreciation to show the raw technology behind: “where’s the battery”? It might as well shatter the dream, but it contributes to the notion of something being ‘real’, another important criterion in considering performativity in wearable technology.
Nevertheless, considering the popularity even from visual documentation only, wearables have an appealing factor. Will eventual performativity come across to an audience from documentation only? If documentation is your end game, the concept should be very strong or it should simply look very good. This is a totally different exercise compared to showing an interactive/ participatory/ performative artwork.
Our definition of performance implies a ‘stage’ and an ‘audience’. We were trying to categorize wearables by different stages. Each stage dictates or prescribes specific properties the wearable must have. Thus different stages could bring different wearables.
This list is ordered by ‘reality check’. Stage 1 needs to be fully operational and retard-proof to be successful, where as stage 8 can be completely fake or virtual. Again, crucial is the notion “does it work?” or “is it real”?
Observation: we do not wear wearables everyday. Why? Are wearables for special events? Are they simply a statement piece?
The whole point of considering performativity and wearables as an interesting combination is because we are looking for the effect it generates.
Therefor we did a second categorization attempt, this time focused on techniques. How do different techniques make you perform differently, when implemented in a garment or costume?
Two reasons: Look at me! (Show off) and See me! (Functional: Don’t run me over).
On a conceptual level, illumination does not have much to offer. Truth be told, LED’s or similar are popular because it is a stable platform (nature of the technology). However: if you ask fashion designers, with little or no knowledge of the technical constraints, to include technology in their designs, they will mostly come up with “light” or “movement”. So there is some natural attraction to it.
Question: does wearing light influence the behavior of the wearer/performer?
'Barreleyes' (Dattah + Evelyn Lebis) positions the dancers in a humble position, they are only the carrier of the light source.
Question: can you ‘wear’ light as such?
For example the Chunky Moves performers do not wear LED’s, but the light is following the body with projection mapping. Thus becoming the clothing in itself. This is balancing on the borders, stretching the definition of wearable technology. It is somewhere in between second and third skin. Check also the youtube video on face projection mapping.
Statement: if something is acting as a kind of skin, it is considered a wearable.
Or in other words: is the definition of a ‘wearable’ related to the distance between technology and the body?
In most cases it will make you freeze, because you don’t want to disturb the fragile technology or you don’t want to withdraw the attention from the garment. The wearer becomes a live mannequin doll. Gliding scale: Who is the performer? Wearable versus wearer...
Statement: People want to touch.
People expect garments to be able to withstand a certain level of touch. They are used to clothing, so they should be able to feel it, explore it, without being anxious to ruin it. Live up to the expectations!! If you need a sign “Don’t Touch Me”, your wearable has a bad interface design. There often is a mismatch between what an audience expects and what (fragile) technology can handle.
Interesting to consider: what does “touch me” in a demonstration setting mean?
Statement: Most wearables are ugly.
If they are meant to do something, then it is about the effect. The effect should be meaningful and subtle. If the wearable is badly designed, it distracts attention. Don’t design for the sake of using lights or any other technology, but do something meaningful with it.
Performance and wearables are highly related, yet very difficult to define or to categorize. The main thing we would like to conclude from this discussion is that artists and designers can use performativity as a starting point for creating meaningful concepts. Tracing back from the audience to the stage to the technique to the garment itself. What story would you like to get across? Who is your target group? In what context will it be presented and what do you need to make that happen?
We believe it can be a powerful tool to start thinking from the perspective of ‘performativity’ rather then to be technology driven.
Coming up next:
V2_Agency will show the following works at the festival: Edwin van de Heide's Evolving Spark Network; Marnix de Nijs and Edwin van der Heide's Spatial Sounds (100dB at 100km/h); Carolien Teunisse and Bram Snijders's augmented reality installation RE:; Telcosystems' 12_Series; Palm Top Theater; Marnix de Nijs's Exploded Views; Nicky Assmann's new installation, Solace; and Geert Mul's God’s Browser, recently nominated for the Share Prize, to be awarded at the Share Festival in Turin, Italy, in early November.
More information on some of the STRP exhibition's highlights is available in the V2_Archive on this website. Many of the historic works on view in Eindhoven were previously exhibited by V2_ in Rotterdam or Den Bosch. Delusions of Self Immolation, Erik Hobijn's "suicide machine," was part of V2_'s 1993 exhibition The Body in Ruin in Den Bosch. Jeffrey Shaw’s 1989 The Legible City appeared at the fourth Manifestation for the Unstable Media.
Although it could be argued that we should have put together an exhibition like this ourselves, we're honored to be part of the STRP program. We'll hold another DEAF festival next year in Rotterdam, and then in another 50 years we'll see which other works will have become classics and put them in our survey exhibition of 100 years of media art in the Netherlands.
]]>Source: http://www.witteveenbos.com
]]>Anouk Wipprecht: The idea for Intimacy 2.0 came up in a brainstorming session after Vienna Fashion Week. Although the fashion world responded enthusiastically to the 1.0 version of the project (Intimacy Black and Intimacy White), there was also a lot of confusion. Maybe that’s a logical consequence of working at the cutting edge of art, technology and fashion. Either way, the fashion world didn’t always understand our approach. Was it fashion? Or was it art, or a prototype? Those were the kinds of questions I got. I don’t make designs that follow trends or can be developed into a collection. My designs are more of a look into the future, and so I deviate from the usual way of working. To move Intimacy more in the direction of fashion, I decided to make a version that was more wearable and to combine the e-foil with leather. There’s also more emphasis placed on the top part now. And we’ve hidden the sensor in a matching envelope bag carried by the model. But there’s still so much work in this design that’s been done by hand that large-scale production would be impossible. I’d rather concentrate on making custom versions.
And you hear the art world criticizing fashion for being vacuous.
AW: Yeah, you’re trapped between two worlds. Whether or not fashion has substance I can’t say. Should a design have substance or should it communicate a message? I see my work as a formal investigation of the human body. For example, shoulders are interesting; they have an architectural quality. The combination of that with the fragile e-foil, which is sometimes transparent and then not, has a poetic quality. I think Intimacy and works like DareDroid are about control, too. Who has the power – the wearer, the audience or the technology?
Media art is often produced by teams of specialists. Can you tell us about your role in that process as a fashion designer?
AW: We worked on Intimacy 2.0 for more than two months. Of course, I already knew the Studio Roosegaarde team (Peter & Christiaan) from Intimacy Black, so it went really smoothly. I developed the designs and ideas in my own studio, and I spent one or two days a week with the team. We tested various forms and materials in the studio. The models are also really important in projects like this one, which stand or fall on a good performance. For Intimacy, we worked with two regular models. Lara’s my main model, who I often use as a persona; we get each other. And Aleide also has exactly the right bearing and knows how to get the feeling we want Intimacy to project across to the audience. The same is true of Robert Lunak’s photography. It’s all about getting the right balance.
Intimacy 2.0 is on view at the STRP festival in Eindhoven, November 2011.
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