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History of Wearable Computing Art

 Anran Zhou 3157820  & Ziyi Wang 3158674

     In the last ten to fifteen years, the technology has dramatically developed and changed. A new field of technology has emerged: it transformed from staying in the pocket to a more body-centric technology: the wearable computing. The wearable computer is a computing device assembled in a way which allows it to be worn or carried on the body while still having the user interface ready for use at all times. By constructing it to be body-worn, a wearable computer makes computing possible in situations where even a laptop would be too cumbersome to open up, boot up and interface; a wearable computer can be used all the time wherever the user goes. According to Susan Elizabeth Ryan, the reason why wearable technology and fashion are bound up together is that the notion of fashion is bound up with the advent of modernism and  modernism itself is also a cultural condition revolved with the technological advancement manifested in terms of industrial production, mass marketing, and urbanized society, thus fashion, modernism, and technology are inevitably bound up together.

First Appearance:  

     “Body Covering”, A Groundbreaking Exhibition:

     The first wearable computer, a fully functional abacus on a ring, shows up is in Qing Dynasty in the 1600s. In 1883, a troupe of ballet dancers attached electric lights on their foreheads and batteries concealed on their dress. With art world’s increasing interest in the body art, artists like Atsuko Tanaka created an electric dress in 1959.

     Finally, in 1968,  the Museum of Contemporary Craft in New York City held the “Body Covering” exhibition that focused on the relationship between technology and garment. In this collection, Diana Dew’ s electronic fashion dress was made up of pliable and removable plastic lamps. She sewed these lamps into her clothing and connected to a rechargeable battery. by adjusting the potentiometer, the dress could produce flashes in the different frequency. At that time, her designs could be seen in a NYC nightclub that was once the storied hangout of artists, musicians, and poets, including Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, and the Abstract Expressionist artists. 

(Diana Dew, Image taken at the opening of the exhibition "Body Covering" on April 5th, 1968. The exhibition was on view at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City, April 6 through June 9, 1968.)

Important Participants: MIT Wearables group

     MIT Media Lab has made great contributions to the development of wearable computing art. In 1997, Maggie Orth at MIT Media Lab developed methods for stitching electronic circuits directly into the fabric, when it was still a wearable computing research group. 

（MIT Wearables group, Version 1.0）

Early Wearables at the Media Lab

     In 1997, Maggie Orth joined the Wearable computing group at MIT, where she helps researchers build things and sewed with her craft making and design skills since she had earned a BFA from RhodeIsland School of Design (RISD). Orth put electricity through a fabric sample from her wedding dress and lit her first led. She also worked with Rehmi Post and Emily Cooper to make the first embroidered keypad in the musical jacket. Later on, the invention of the firefly dress and necklace and the musical jacket premiered at the lab’s first wearable fashion show in 1997. Most pieces on the show combined the design work of fashion students and the technology ideas of researchers and engineers at the Media Lab.

（Maggie Orth, Emily Cooper, Rehmi Post, Joshua Smith and Joshua Strickon, Musical Jacket, 1997. 1 of 25 created for The Wearable Fashion Show）

MIT Smart Clothes Fashion Show in 1997

（A wearable computing fashion show at the Media Laboratory, Oct. 15, 1997, in cooperation with Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, Creapole in Paris, Domus in Milan, and the Parsons School of Design in New York. 0:00-1:00）

     The fashion show was a design collaboration between the students and faculty of Creapole Ecole de Creation (Paris) and Prof. Alex Pentland (MIT, Boston), with the goal of envisioning the impending marriage of fashion and wearable computers. In this show, MIT showed things like shirts with intercoms and hats provides solar power for built-in cell phone and a navigational system. It’s one of the most important shows that represent the applications of wearable computing in performance art and fashion, and also the representation at the early stage of development.

（Design Sketches for the fashion show）

    In the next decade, the wearable computing has made great progress. While the application in art and fashion is slow by comparison. In 2001, the founder of XS Labs (Extra Soft) in Montreal, Joanna Berzowska developed the first addressable color-change textile and held the International Fashion Machines show in Boston. Their Memory Rich Clothing could detect and record the physical intimacy. LEDs stitched across the front and illuminates when someone whispers into your ear to show the happening of an intimacy event. 

        “We create garments that could show personal data, such as how they move through space or where and when they have last been touched. These representations reflect more abstract, subtle, and possibly more poetic aspects of our identity and our history.”

(Memory Rich Clothing — a series of reactive body-worn artifacts that display and communicate embodied memory)

     In 2007, Hussein Chalayan, one of the famous fashion designers who take steps into this field at a very early stage, presented his futuristic fashion design in his ready-to-wear, spring 2007 show: models walked on the stage in the long dress and under it is a computer-driven system to control the clothes to twitch and shrink up.

     Nowadays, more influential fashion brands were getting involved with wearable technology. In 2014, Tory Burch produced a wrist-friendly fitness tracker and  Opening Ceremony launched a jacket with integrated phone chargers. In 2015, Richard Nicoll showed a breathtaking light up dress at London fashion week. This slip dress was made from a fiber optic fabric activated by high-intensity LEDs to create an ethereal glow fading paisley on the catwalk. 

“More design houses are quietly meeting experts, eager to ensure they are not left behind, but cautious about rushing out a product that flops” (Hannah Marriott). 

Leah Buechley and Arduino Lilypad, Good News for DIY Fans

（Leah Buechley, Assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab, director of the High-Low Tech Group. Her research in the field of electronic textiles and invention of Lilypad earned her the Best Paper award at the 2006 International Symposium on Wearable Computers.）

     Leah Buechley started to discover conductive thread and fabric at the University of Colorado Boulder, and when she was pursuing her graduate degree in Computer Science in 2005, she started looking at the work of Maggie Orth and Joanna Berzowska, pioneers combined tech and design together. The first lilypad kits start from square fabric circuit boards and were used in workshops for teaching high school kids. And the second version of the Lilypad was a flower shape with a small controller attached with plastic resin. The final version of Lilypad Arduino was released in October 2007, which made everything simpler to use and sold out quickly by DIY fans. It is an Arduino-programmed microcontroller designed to be easily integrated into e-textiles and wearable projects and offers the same functionality in other Arduino boards. Each LilyPad has large connecting pads to allow it to be sewn into the fabric. Buechely’s invention lets all the fabric could work as interface and all the electronic components are sewable that allow individuals to build their own wearable project. Later on, MIT Media Lab hired her as the Assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab and the director of the High-Low Tech Group.

          “I just loved the materials. I loved the juxtaposition of this really feminine beautiful decorative thing (textiles) with this techy, nerdy guy thing (electronics)… that contrast. One of the things that’s most exciting for me about the medium is that material and cultural contrast.” (Leah Buechley, 2014)

More Examples

(The wearable computing technology is being widely spread and used in a variety of designs)

     Many of the interesting designs are the combination of fashion and technology. In the Kino project “living jewelry ”, the group designed a type of cloth that can change its appearance. The fabric has tiny robots sitting on top, by themselves moving and stretching, they can be able to pull things or generate patterns. The project is still being developed, and the team is expecting the robot to be seamless and do more things. All in all, the lilypad and other controllers, did provide the designers a new way of thinking, also allowing them to be able to make things that can never be happening in the past.

     More than that, designer Birce Ozkan created a feathered augmented jacket, that can detect locations and can be used as a guide. It is a two piece work, a jacket, and a matched skirt. The jacket can be able to tell the users which way is North, by ruffle up the feathers. The movement is quite neat, smoothly moving up and down. The designer got the inspiration from the birds and their biological compasses that can detect earth’s magnets.  The skirt can connect to google map, so knowing where the user is going, it can guide the directions and tell the user to turn right or left. Wearing this dress, the user can free themselves away from their cel-phone, but can also being able to find the right way.

   Ending  

     When Leah Buechley brought her second version of Lilypad Arduino in teaching class, school girls were also excited about engineering and computing:

          “It was a great way to bust open the stereotypes associated with technology. That was one of my main reasons for wanting to make it commercial. It seemed like this was really a cool social disruptor.”

     It’s noticeable that female is empowered and plays a significant role in the development of wearable technology art. The advantage women have in terms of hand making craft and aesthetic sensitivity might be the reason of this. Wearable computing art provides space for women in the world of computer science and electronic which is normally a male-dominated world. Meanwhile, it also changes the way we think about our bodies. Our bodies are our primary interface of the world. The wearable computing lives on it and even start to feel like part of your body since it can feel your feelings and even enhance it by transporting us to a virtual world.  The involving of wearable computing provides more possibilities to the fashion industry and create an innovational culture of traditional arts: technology lets the beauty happen so naturally and made our lives better. It’s the time that technology starting to be invisible:  It merges into walls, furniture, clothing and our daily life, “the ideal time for the fashion industry to get involved: the textile world is about to come alive because of these wonderful new technologies” (Nancy Tilbury, co-founder, and director of Studio XO). While this is just the beginning, and still a lot to be revealed. We can expect to see more dramatical developments and artwork in the next decade.

Reference:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=HsikAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&ots=ukBW_zJc_4&dq=fashion%20and%20design%20%22wearable%20computing%22&lr&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q=fashion%20and%20design%20%22wearable%20computing%22&f=false

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