ISEA 2004

We're on to the next panel. Trebor Scholz from SUNY makes a start, talking about Free Cooperation which was inspired by the book Gleicher als Andere by Christoph Speer - dealing with the question of setting up collaborative projects which involve a more equitable and non-hierarchical structuration of power.

I'm really quite impressed with the battery life of my laptop (a Toshiba Portege provided by QUT), but even 5 hours aren't enough to blog a whole conference day without recharging.

We're now back to talking about wearable technologies, with a focus on embedded devices. Kelly Dobson from MIT makes the start. Some interesting work on human/machine feedback - e.g. a blender whose speed responds to the intensity of how a human operator growls at it. Some anthropomorphising of machines, or mechanomorphising of humans? She's also developed body extensions like a wearable bag called ScreamBody which a user can scream into (without being audible to anyone), thus recording their scream, and the later release the scream elsewhere, as well as HugBody (recording and recalling hugs).

The second ISEA day in Tallinn has started. I'm currently in a panel on legal implications of avant-garde science / art projects. Mainly they're talking about the Steve Kurtz case - an artist in the US who was charged with bioterrorism offences when ambulance officers (whom he'd called following the sudden death of his wife) found bio-active substances which he was using in his art. While such charges have now been dropped, he's still being charged with mail fraud - not a minor matter in the US either...

Tallinn's WiFiedTallinn (and by extension, I guess, Estonia) is an interesting place. The rapid changes it's gone through over the last decade or so seem evident at every street corner - from the many new buildings and cars to the renovation work all over town to the English-language for sale/rent signs everywhere. This is also the first place I've ever seen an official city council WiFi hotspot sign!

City Hall under Surveillance?What's interesting is that any evidence of the past under Soviet rule is virtually absent. Russian language is nowhere to be seen, and is heard mainly as you walk past the building workers and the old women at the flea markets. On the other hand, the antiques and souvenir stores are full of discarded Red Army hats and medals, Lenin and Stalin busts, and Russian orthodox icons.

On to the next panel session now. Not sure I'll catch all the panellists' names... Barbara Layne of Hexagram is speaking at the moment. (Also, I have only one more hour of battery power on the laptop!) Barbara has done a project called Fault Lines which converted seismograph data into fabrics. Other work includes weaving LEDs into fabrics - this seems somewhat more pedestrian than the work shown in other presentations, but I suppose we're talking proof-of-concept here...

Also, this raises the question of whether sufficient quantities of materials (e.g. small-gauge wires etc.) are currently available at all. Another interesting point: Cirque du Soleil is a partner of Hexagram, which should open pathways to some imaginative applications. Finally also a live demonstration of a garment with text scrolling across it (as I waited for my connecting flight in Singapore, Inspector Gadget was showing on the TV screens, featuring a hat with scrolling messages - a strange synchronicity...

After lunch, we've now moved on to the second ISEA panel on wearable technologies. Some interesting discussions over lunch, too - someone pointed out that interestingly no-one mentioned nanotechnology at all! I'm also wondering to what extent wearable technology will be accessories (in a fashion sense - wristbands, necklaces, etc.) rather than garments themselves.

Katherine Moriwaki is now talking about her project Recoil which embedded strong magnets in clothes so that the garments would snap to metallic objects and others' clothes (with magnets themselves) as they walk past them. Interesting to see that this is a common theme to both presentations so far: clothes that act autonomously, without the wearer's involvement (also in reaction to body heat changes and other environmental factors, for example)... She's on to ad-hoc mobile networking (or more precisely, "a multi-hop dynamic routing ad-hoc network") now. This is very interesting: people wearing these devices essentially become mobile nodes in the network. Also of interest is how people might use, adapt their movements to, or even try to cheat the network parameters. Her umbrella.net (with Jonah Brucker-Cohen) project also adds a visual footprint for the network since the umbrellas which are the WiFi devices change colour according to their network activity. We're now on to Susan Ryan speaking about the genderedness of wearable technology - from fetishistic depictions of female cyborgs to deliberately asexual wearable tech garments to highly macho combat-style gear. Some interesting images of implanted wearable tech as well - here, for example, your 'enhanced' thumb would become your credit card...

Joanna Berzowska is the first keynote speaker, on wearable technology. An interesting term: tangible computing. Stresses the importance of actual wearability, which will likely require a certain softness to the technology.

Arriving in TallinnISEA has reached Tallinn. I'm blogging this live from the welcome session by the Estonian minister of culture. A fairly creative industries-inflected welcome, actually - obviously the Estonian government realises the value of these industries to its economy. (And I must say it's amazing to see the changes this place has gone through in the last 10-15 years.) Now we're on to Tapio Mäkelä's welcome.