“Wearables, Prosthetics and the Future of Fashion”
The symposium talks a lot of of technology and how to make things, but the focal point is how digital technology changes our own body. So it should be relevant to anybody.
Textile crafts have used digitally coded algorithms over 30.000 years before the invention of the computer. Even in the neolithicum people had been literally wrapped in code, as weaving looms predate in many ways the codes and algorithms which are ubiquitous in modern computers. The first pioneers of computing have been inspired by the punch-card-controlled weaving looms. But for a very long time, clothing - one of the most disruptive wearables in human history - was merely static: the computational smartness only available at production time.
Today most digital technology still consists of hard boxes, Modern material science, electronics and sensor technologies aim at bridging that gap, allowing textiles and clothing incorporating yet-to-be unseen functionality in our second skin.
We will discuss with transdisciplinary makers giving perspectives on fashion, material science, craftsmanship, economics, electronics and self optimization.
Hannah Perner-Wilson – as part of the duo Kobakant – explores the use of textile crafts and electronics as a medium for commenting on technological aspects of today’s “high-tech” society. She believes in the spirit of humoring technology, believing that technology exists to be hacked, handmade and modified by everyone to better fit our personal needs and desires. Hannah will do the “Soft Sensors for Soft Bodies” workshop on saturday May 2nd.
node15.vvvv.org/