[spectre] August on -empyre- soft-skinned space: Wearable Technologies with Heidi Kumao, Katherine Moriwaki and Florian 'Floyd' Mueller

[Michael Arnold Mages]

This month on -empyre-,  we venture into the world of wearable technologies
in the context of social and public art practice. Katherine Moriwaki (US) is
an artist and researcher investigating clothing accessories as the active
conduit through which people  create network relationships in public space.
Florian 'Floyd'  Mueller (AU) designs interfaces that deliberately require
intense physical effort to facilitate social connectedness between remote
participants.  Heidi Kumao's (US) incisive feminist practice  currently
investigates the RFID tags that industry is adopting for  product tracking,
the government for border control and public  libraries for automatic
checkout.

Join us at 
http://www.subtle.net/empyre


August guest biographies:


--> Katherine Moriwaki is an artist and  researcher investigating clothing
and accessories as the active  conduit through which people create network
relationships in public  space. Katherine co-developed and taught the
ground-breaking  collaboration studio "Fashionable Technology" at Parsons
School of Design. She is a 2004 recipient of the Araneum Prize from the
Spanish Ministry for Science and Technology and Fundacion ARCO.
http://www.kakirine.com


--> Florian 'Floyd' Mueller is a Principal Scientist in the ICT Centre,
leading the "Connecting People" group at CSIRO - Commonwealth Scientific and
Industrial Research Organisation, Australia. His research interests are in
novel interfaces that help people to connect to media and to other people,
creating a more seamless connection between humans and technology. He
proposed  the concept of Exertion Interfaces: interfaces that deliberately
require intense physical effort to facilitate social connectedness  between
remote participants at http://exertioninterfaces.com Floyd's research
centers on the challenge of creating an interface that is engaging and fun,
not simply functional. http://floydmueller.com


--> Heidi Kumao is an artist who dissects ordinary social interactions using
new media and animation, kinetic/electronic sculpture, and performance art.
Some of her work takes the form of wearable electronics, where she uses
technology to address feminist issues and insert a female point of view into
the world of high-tech innovation. "WiredWear" consists of the research,
design, and creation of one-of-a-kind articles of women's clothing equipped
with custom electronics and an accompanying informational video. Each
article enhances the wearer's everyday life by transforming the smallest
social interaction or relationship into a performative exchange or by
providing the wearer with important vital information (words of
encouragement, bio feedback, etc.). http://www.heidikumao.net


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