Mobile and Wireless Technologies

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.