Visual Communication current issue

Wearable technology

Cranny-Francis, A., Hawkins, C. — 2008-07-22

Sonic drapery as a folding metaphor for a wearable visualization and sonification display

Beilharz, K., Vande Moere, A. — 2008-07-22

This article examines two different multimodal interpretations of a folding metaphor, with folding understood as a richly interpretable communication medium. The authors look at the mythological origins of giving voice to fabrics and the tradition in drapery and arts of creating folds to signify embedded meanings. Their projects explore the intertextuality and intermodality of drapery (found originally in painting) as the context for sonic drapery or audification of material in motion and electronic music created from sounds of cloth, friction and permutations of textile sounds. This notion of folding representation is then transported into a contemporary pervasive computing context, as the second section of the article concerns the design and development of a novel wearable visualization and sonification display device. This display is able to sense and externalize environmental data about the wearer using a deliberately subtle and ambiguous representation metaphor.

Wear now!

High Tea With Mrs Woo, , Cranny-Francis, A. — 2008-07-22

This is a photo-essay of the design philosophy and practice of a three-sister fashion design team based in Newcastle, Australia. Their interest in fabrication, textiles and technology in fashion led them to participate in the Australian Network of Art and Technology (ANAT)'s reSkin wearable technology laboratory 2007. The lab explored the integration of electronics and new materials into traditional craft practices and design artefacts. This photo-essay addresses questions raised by Anne Cranny-Francis that came out of that ReSkin experience, as well as general questions relating to their design practice.

Peacocks and wallflowers: (in)visibility with digital jewellery

Kettley, S. — 2008-07-22

As a genre of Ubiquitous Computing, wearables inherited a paradigmatic ideal of disappearance and, until very recently, visibility was treated as a simplistic dichotomous issue of overt versus covert technology. In line with calls by theorists in New Media for oscillation between states of invisibility and reflection in the design of interfaces, this article presents findings from a networked jewellery project which reconceptualize this problem as both situated and dynamic, revealing that wearable artefacts segue between high states of visibility and disappearance just as they afford their wearers new ways of maintaining social presence.

Clothing the homunculus

Barrass, S. — 2008-07-22

The concept of the homunculus, or `body in the brain', has been used by neuroscientists to explain bodily illusions such as the Shrinking Waist, the disappearance of limbs from conscious perception with stroke, and the sensations of phantom limbs. In this article, the author proposes that the homunculus can also provide a theoretical basis for the design of wearable interfaces and information systems. This idea is explored in a series of practice-led experiments with textile interfaces. The first experiment, called ZiZi the Affectionate Couch, is a couch that responds with a tactile `purring' when it is stroked. Visitors to exhibitions of the couch have commented on the positive effects this tactile responsiveness has had on autistic children in their care. The next experiment, called Scruffy Scallyscrap, is a prototype of an actively tactile textile, called a `taxtile', that co-locates tactile input and output in the same textile substrate. The most recent development is a `nerve extension button' designed to connect a taxtile to the tactile sensations of the wearer. Ten of these buttons have been sewn on the inside of a fashion concept garment called Fauxy the Fake Fur with Feelings. In further work, Fauxy will be used to explore what effects these nerve extensions might have on the bodily perceptions and behaviours of the wearer.

Designing for the unexpected: the role of creative group work for emerging interaction design paradigms

Pirhonen, A., Murphy, E. — 2008-07-22

Interaction design for new technological environments relies on the tradition of human—computer interaction (HCI). With roots in the 1980s, HCI design paradigms often reflect the setting in which the user is an office worker in front of a desktop computer. As computational power can now be embedded in almost any type of product, the desktop setting has lost much of its relevance as a starting point for interface design. In particular, interfaces for wearable computing challenge designers to look for completely new approaches to interaction design. In this article, we propose a method in which the ideas for new creative forms of interaction design are triggered through panel work. This method draws on an underpinning theoretical framework from structural semiotics that emphasizes the holistic nature of design.

Realism of the unreal: the Japanese robot and the performance of representation

Sone, Y. — 2008-07-22

This article addresses the general theme of wearable technology from an oblique angle - via performance studies - by examining the performative basis of interactions between humans and machines. The author considers the developing nature of human robot relations in Japan, and raises concerns relevant to discussions of wearable technologies.

From extension to engagement: mapping the imaginary of wearable technology

Cranny-Francis, A. — 2008-07-22

This article maps the metaphors that have been used to facilitate human engagement with wearable technologies — extension, enhancement, augmentation — and locates the values and assumptions about the body and technology that they articulate. At the same time it considers the figure of the cyborg, in which many of these metaphors are incorporated fictionally and theoretically, and locates in this figure not one (interrogative, critical) meaning, but many possible meanings. The article then goes on to explore a recent reconfiguring of the human—technology relationship (Schroeder and Rebelo's 2007 analogy with the relationship between musician and intstrument), which it describes in terms of engagement — and to propose further that we need to embrace fully the embodied character of this relationship in order to realize the most creative possibilities of our relationship with the material world as expressed in this recent technology.

Book review: CIGALLE HANAOR, Breaking the Mould: New Approaches to Ceramics. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007. 208 pp. ISBN 978--1--904772--76--7

Clayton, J. — 2008-07-22

Book review: `Welcome to Texas -- God Bless': A Review of a Biblical Journey

Serisier, G. — 2008-07-22