The telematic dress: Evolving garments and distributed proprioception in streaming media and fashion performance

Centered around several short films from streaming performances created in 2005, this paper explores new ideas for movement technologies and garment design in an arts and digital research context. The "telematic dress" project, developed at the DAP Lab in Nottingham, involves transdisciplinary intersections between fashion and live performance, interactive system architecture, electronic textiles, wearable technologies, choreography, and anthropology. The concept on an evolving garment design that is materialized (moved) in live performance originates from DAP Lab's experimentation with telematics and distributed media (http://art.ntu.ac. uk/performance_research/birringer/dap.htm] addressing "connective tissues" through a study of perception/proprioception in the wearer (tactile sensory processing) and the dancer/designer/viewer relationship. This study is conducted as cross-cultural communication with online performance partners in Europe, the US, Brazil and Japan. The inter-active space is predicated on transcultural questions: how does the movement with an evolving design and wearable interactive sensors travel, how does movement - and capturing of movement - allow the design to emerge toward a garment statement, and how are bodies-in-relation-to sensory fabrics affected by the multidimensional kinesthetics of a media-rich, responsive environment

Atmospheres of choreographic design

The artistic and technical investigations of the Design and Performance Lab, based at Brunel University in London (UK) and co-directed by Johannes Birringer and Michèle Danjoux, have encompassed research into how costumes and specially designed body-worn technologies affect movement expression. They have also addressed the question of designing costumes for use in performative or proactive environments which themselves are conceived as formative, not built or constructed in a stable form.https://metabody.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/METABODY-JOURNAL-1.pd

Wearable performance

This is the post-print version of the article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2009 Taylor & FrancisWearable computing devices worn on the body provide the potential for digital interaction in the world. A new stage of computing technology at the beginning of the 21st Century links the personal and the pervasive through mobile wearables. The convergence between the miniaturisation of microchips (nanotechnology), intelligent textile or interfacial materials production, advances in biotechnology and the growth of wireless, ubiquitous computing emphasises not only mobility but integration into clothing or the human body. In artistic contexts one expects such integrated wearable devices to have the two-way function of interface instruments (e.g. sensor data acquisition and exchange) worn for particular purposes, either for communication with the environment or various aesthetic and compositional expressions. 'Wearable performance' briefly surveys the context for wearables in the performance arts and distinguishes display and performative/interfacial garments. It then focuses on the authors' experiments with 'design in motion' and digital performance, examining prototyping at the DAP-Lab which involves transdisciplinary convergences between fashion and dance, interactive system architecture, electronic textiles, wearable technologies and digital animation. The concept of an 'evolving' garment design that is materialised (mobilised) in live performance between partners originates from DAP Lab's work with telepresence and distributed media addressing the 'connective tissues' and 'wearabilities' of projected bodies through a study of shared embodiment and perception/proprioception in the wearer (tactile sensory processing). Such notions of wearability are applied both to the immediate sensory processing on the performer's body and to the processing of the responsive, animate environment. Wearable computing devices worn on the body provide the potential for digital interaction in the world. A new stage of computing technology at the beginning of the 21st Century links the personal and the pervasive through mobile wearables. The convergence between the miniaturisation of microchips (nanotechnology), intelligent textile or interfacial materials production, advances in biotechnology and the growth of wireless, ubiquitous computing emphasises not only mobility but integration into clothing or the human body. In artistic contexts one expects such integrated wearable devices to have the two-way function of interface instruments (e.g. sensor data acquisition and exchange) worn for particular purposes, either for communication with the environment or various aesthetic and compositional expressions. 'Wearable performance' briefly surveys the context for wearables in the performance arts and distinguishes display and performative/interfacial garments. It then focuses on the authors' experiments with 'design in motion' and digital performance, examining prototyping at the DAP-Lab which involves transdisciplinary convergences between fashion and dance, interactive system architecture, electronic textiles, wearable technologies and digital animation. The concept of an 'evolving' garment design that is materialised (mobilised) in live performance between partners originates from DAP Lab's work with telepresence and distributed media addressing the 'connective tissues' and 'wearabilities' of projected bodies through a study of shared embodiment and perception/proprioception in the wearer (tactile sensory processing). Such notions of wearability are applied both to the immediate sensory processing on the performer's body and to the processing of the responsive, animate environment

L'Etat, c'est pas moi : Reframing citizenship(s) in the Baltic republics

This book speaks to readers with a particular interest in the Baltic states as well as to those with a broader interest in post-communist democratization and citizenship. The notion of citizenship has not been prominent in academic perspectives on post-communism. This study aims at bringing citizenship back into these perspectives. Starting from the idea that citizenship is both a condition of democracy and an indicator of the level of democracy in a given society, the author studies the extent to which theories of citizenship currently dominating political science account for the specific experience of people living in the Baltic countries. This study's theoretical bedrock is thus a critical overview of the republican, liberal and cultural conceptions of citizenship, done in relation to the historically specific nature of post-communism. The analytical instrument derived from this critical overview of theory is a two-dimensional model of citizenship called the Legacy and the Scruples. That model draws insights from, notably, linguistics and anthropology. It is applied to Baltic citizens' experiences of both communist and post-communist citizenships. Ruptures and continuities between these two kinds of citizenship are highlighted. This study argues that the current weakness of citizenship in the Baltic states is due not so much to difficulties in managing ethnic diversity (although such difficulties exist) than to more specifically political factors. These factors are linked to the ways citizenship and political power are conceived of and exercised in these countries

Epithelial ingrowth following laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK): prevalence, risk factors, management and visual outcomes

The number of laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) procedures is continuing to rise. Since its first application for correcting simple refractive errors over 25 years ago, the role of LASIK has extended to treat other conditions, including postkeratoplasty astigmatism/ametropia, postcataract surgery refractive error and presbyopia, among others. The long-term effectiveness, predictability and safety have been well established by many large studies. However, due to the creation of a potential interface between the flap and the underlying stroma, interface complications such as infectious keratitis, diffuse lamellar keratitis and epithelial ingrowth may occur. Post-LASIK epithelial ingrowth (PLEI) is an uncommon complication that usually arises during the early postoperative period. The reported incidence of PLEI ranged from 0%–3.9% in primary treatment to 10%–20% in retreatment cases. It can cause a wide spectrum of clinical presentations, ranging from asymptomatic interface changes to severe visual impairment and flap melt requiring keratoplasty. PLEI can usually be treated with mechanical debridement of the affected interface; however, additional interventions, such as alcohol, mitomycin C, fibrin glue, ocular hydrogel sealant, neodymium:yttriumaluminum garnet laser and amniotic membrane graft, may be required for recurrent or refractory cases. The aims of this review are to determine the prevalence and risk factors of PLEI; to describe its pathogenesis and clinical features and to summarise the therapeutic armamentarium and the visual outcome of PLEI

Design-in-Motion: Sculpting Choreosonic Wearables

Oskar Schlemmer’s constraining costume concepts and wearable objects for the theatre of the Bauhaus in the 1920s were central to his movement research. His aim was to limit movement through design intervention to more precisely hone in on the abstract mathematics of lines and geometries created by the mediated body in space. In The Triadic Ballet (premiered 1922) for example, he analysed the restricted movements of the performing body in relation to costume’s physical material characteristics as geometrical form located on the body. While his later stage-space-architecture movement pieces (1927-1929), such as Stick Dance, scrutinised the motion of performers’ bodies as they engaged with abstract material forms in space. Altering physical movement was for Schlemmer not the only intention; he also explored the relationship of the dynamic body to the making of sound, appropriating materials with inherent percussive characteristics such as glass as new instruments of sounding [Trimingham 2011, 146]. This visual essay, concerns the use of choreosonic wearables in the devising process and explores wearable movement-sounding in interactive performance contexts. It reveals how Schlemmer’s methodologies have inspired design-in-motion explorations, both as wearable movement initiators and movement sonification systems that can stretch aspects of movement improvisation

Wearables and Choreosonic Gesture

Wearables worn by sound artists tend to reveal more about the aesthetics of the technology in-forming the aesthetics of the design, sensors, switches and actuators all visible. Danjoux’ s work with the DAP-Lab initially foregrounded some of the technologies visually in her design concepts, but more recently has avoided an explicit technologized look, returning to the softness/tactility of things rather than wires, switches and controllers. Danjoux discusses specific design concepts for wearables and “dysfunctional” fashion, in regard to choreography and interactive systems or instrumental architectures developed by the DAP-lab’s artistic productions – experiments with choreosonic gestures and affective interfaces (examples will be shown on film, referencing UKIYO [Moveable Worlds],2010, and for the being [Victory over the Sun],2014). Briefly analyzingfilm excerpts from DAP-Lab’s audible and biosensory choreography, Danjoux will conclude with some reflections on notions of fashion technology’s morphing and shape-shifting power, but also address the poetics and retro-garde politics of the work and its emphasis on corporeal noise, and noisy disalignments of control technologies

Design-in-Motion: Choreosonic Wearables in Performance

Design-in-Motion: Choreosonic Wearables in Performance entitles a PhD thesis, undertaken at the London College of Fashion, consisting of practice-based research in design and performance. The project interrogates the choreographic space of real-time interactive dance performance through experimentation with specially designed audiophonic wearables. The fashion design-led interdisciplinary concepts presented here challenge movement processes and perceptions of the role of costume within dance and the performing arts. The thesis begins with a theoretical and historical investigation of pertinent artistic works which exemplify material extensions of the moving body or hint at acoustic and sensory-kinetic dimensions of fashioning the choreographic – what this project proposes as ‘transformational wearing’. It then focuses on the compositional dynamics within which such instrument bodies actively perform and become sounding- movement characters in two choreographic productions by the DAP-Lab – UKIYO (2009-2011) and for the time being (2012-2014). The written thesis is accompanied by media documentation of these productions which underlie and constitute my strategies of inquiry into wearable design. Over the past decade, the interest in wearables as intermediary devices in mediatised performance has become notable in artistic explorations and research inquiry in the sonic arts and dance fields alike. Moreover, as this research reveals, dress/costume is becoming more studied in academic contexts for the multifaceted and significant role it can play in performance. This thesis investigates the performative and affective potentials of audiophonic garments and bodily extensions – where the act of wearing becomes a multi-sensorial (sound, image, touch) and perceptual performance technique for the dancer, enabling a new movement-sounding creativity. The generative choreosonic aspect of the work is also theoretically and historically traced back through dance and music contexts (such as gesture-controlled music interfaces and interactional choreography) illustrating the notion of the ‘intertwined body’ proposed in the thesis. Positioned as wearable-performance design, and placing the creation of prototypes at the start of a performance-making process, the original designs introduced here augment both body and process by provoking new movement choices. The work thus questions how wearables/costume can be used to extend the sensory engagement of performers and shape the emergent dance through a specific entwinement of body and material artefact. The wearable also plays a significant part in the overall scenographic and choreographic organisation of interactive performance, integrating into the dramaturgical conception. Historical instances, for example Loïe Fuller’s voluminous costumes at the turn of the twentieth century animating her body through lighting technology and motion, and the Bauhaus Dances with sculptural costume designs by Oskar Schlemmer, are used to illuminate the context of my practice as well as the theoretical and practical concepts for wearable sound that I have advanced. Transformational wearing is methodically examined here for analogue and digital corporeal engagement. It offers a newly expanded system of expressivity to the dancer for the emergence of movement which evolves through the dynamic interrelations between her perceiving body, the materiality of the wearable, and the ensounding

Choreography and Sounding Wearables

This article explores the role of ‘sounding costumes’ and body-worn technologies for choreographic composition, with real-time interactional elements (such as microphones, speakers, sensors) potentially integrated into movement and expressive behaviour. Sounding garments explore the interactions between dancer/performer, the costume and the environment in the generation and manipulation of sonic textures. Briefly discussing historical precedents of integrated composition, the article will mainly refer to sounding prototypes in DAP-Lab’s latest production, For the time being [Victory over the Sun] (2012–2014), for which I designed the wearables, highlighting new methods for building sensual wearable electro-acoustic costumes to create kinaesonic choreographies. The article analyses the multi-perspectival potentials of such conceptual garments/wearable artefacts to play a significant part in the creation process of a performance, focusing on how wearable design can influence and shape movement vocabularies through the impact of its physical material presence on the body, distinctive design aesthetics and sound-generating capabilities. Choreographically, garments and body-worn technologies act as amplifying instruments as well as sculptural constraints or conversely enablers of new movement and ways of sounding/listening that affect different kinetic and acoustic awareness (both in the performers and in the audience)

Sound and Wearables

This chapter introduces crossovers between fashion, performance, music and sound art, investigating analog and digital techniques used for the construction of “sounding” costumes which play a significant part in the overall scenographic and choreographic organization of real-time interactive art and performance. Addressing the multifaceted, dynamic and relational aspects of garments/accessories, technologies and performing bodies, the authors refer to some historical examples of sound instruments, body instruments and physiological instrumentation (encompassing sculptural wearables, body-worn technologies with wired or wireless sensors and other capture modalities, as well as amplificatory wearables). Integrated methods are highlighted for creating such kinaesonic choreographies for the contemporary intermedial theater and the expanding sector of media arts and mobile arts