Exhibit at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA

My new handbag, a original creation by Zipik (tailored for me); Zipik is a Mexican designer!!! ©Zipik 2004

A creation by Zipik! ©Zipik 2004

This past summer, coming back from a visit to the FRAC Centre, Orléans, France, I had in my hands a leaflet concerning FOYERS, an exhibit by Sylvie Ungauer that had happened in 2002. A look at her website to find amongst other projects At Home and Habiter (check the video!), which singularly reminds me of the work of Lucy Orta

In July 2005, I was presenting to the Presidential Choice Panel entitled Mobile Geographies at the SASE conference. Here is below an extract of the presentation:

“In the age of mobilities, when technologies have invaded the privacy of homes, the territory, personal or communal, is fragmented, scattered, and linked. It has shrunk to the skin, or the skin-clothing as a matter of fact. If habitat is a matter of habit, it is also a matter of “habit” which mean in French “clothing”. [1] Interestingly, wearable computing technologies link people, skin-clothing boundaries and space in an interesting manner. For example, the Patrol project empowers the wearer while diminishing arising dangers of the physical environment, by anticipating and avoiding obstacles. [2] In this instance, the architecture of the space could not matter less for the roaming of the nomad-warrior. The wearer can travel almost anywhere. Thus it can be argued on one hand, that the architecture of the space itself acquires the certain roundness that Deleuze and Guattari write about. “Roundness exists only as a thresholds-affect (neither flat nor pointed), and as a limit process […]” [3] When avoiding obstacles, the wearer avoids edges, pass fluidly by them, never touching them. Thus the distance between the wearer and the space, creates a sort of cushion, giving a “vague identity” to the space in which the wearer travels.”

[1] For further discussion see:
Werner Blaser, Lars Müller, Habit-Habitat : Christa de Carouge (Lars Müller Publishers, 2001) and, Simard-Laflamme Carole, Habit, Habitat, Habitus (Trois-Rivières : Le Sabord, 2002)…

[2] The Patrol project of Thad Starner, Bernt Schiele, and Alex Penthland has been developed after a chasing game, Patrol, played by MIT students (then fast paced nomads). This game required to occult vision by placing a band on the eyes. “The gestures and actions in Patrol provided a relatively well defined language and goal structure in a very harsh ‘real-life’ sensing environment. As such, Patrol became a context-sensing project within itself,” which enabled the elaboration of a technology, small “body-mounted” camera integrated in hat and connected to an embedded computer. The technology as such was helpful in the anticipation of the wearer’s tasks for example, and his future needs. Understanding that such technology may well be used for the physically impaired to roam in harsh real environment, this weapon, which provides and enhanced awareness of the physical environment, also participates to the “repairing” of the body.
Thad Starner, Bernt Schiele, and Alex Pentland, Visual Contextual Awareness in Wearable Computing, Perceptual Computing, submitted to the International Symposium on Wearable Computing, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 19-20 October 1998, and available online:
http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/projects/wearable/papers.html

[3] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Excerpt from 1227: Treatise on Nomadology: The War Machine; in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (University of Minnesota Press, 1987)

RSS feed and explore Gizmag! Another of my favorite… Lot’s of goodies like the now classic Nyx clothing with “built-in flexible display screens” also mentioned in an article of Courrier International: MO(N)DES - Quand les nouvelles technologies envahissent nos fringues.

No more problem with washing (which was the main argument of the skeptical) I quote: “Jusqu’à présent, les câbles ou les puces en métal intégrés aux vêtements – ou aux jouets en peluche – avaient un ennemi redoutable : le lave-linge. Mais de récentes innovations permettent d’innerver les fibres des vêtements de conducteurs électroniques en plastique, qui ne se corrodent pas. Voilà la porte ouverte à bien des rêves.”

Obviously, wearable technology is an important part of my research, as individuals, objects and environments, all become fields of hypertexts.

On that note, read L’homme radar ou la place des technologies dans les systèmes d’information du voyage by par Bruno Marzloff, Stéphane Chevrier et Stéphane Juguet. They write that “Les technologies participent à l’inflation communicationnelle, mais elles en encouragent l’exploitation radar, c’est-à-dire la collecte dirigée, le tri, l’organisation, la localisation pour le compte du voyageur.”

Check Cati’s blog… It is full of creative projects!

For example the beautiful touching memories project: “Touch is at the heart of intimate relationship. It is also a powerful trigger of past emotions. Touching memories is a system that detects and records a touch by a loved one. Be it a stroke, a pat, a hug, or a rub, the system will store the touch and play it back to you whenever you need it”

Browse!

How long one can dwell in transit? Check the Voltaic™ Solar Bags.

Sheila Kennedy (”Sheila Kennedy is a founding Principal of Kennedy & Violich Architecture, (KVA) an inter-disciplinary practice that explores new relationships between architecture, technology and urbanism in contemporary culture.”) is currently teaching the following studio: Shadow Cities: Nomads + Nanomaterials at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design! (this tells me that I clearly need to finish my thesis!)

Course description excerpts:
“Technology Remix: El Terminal / SHADOW CITIES will reconsider the traditional relationship between building infrastructure and architectural form through the design of a new public bus terminal and market structure in the Centro district of the Mexican city of Zacatecas.”
“Nomads / SHADOW CITIES will study and address the needs of the nomadic Huichol people of Mexico, The Huichol (Wirrarica) are one of the few indigenous groups in Mexico to have maintained a large corpus of Mesoamerican textile weaving, thatch and wood braiding traditions. The Huichol are a nomadic culture, traveling (often on foot) 400 miles on annual journeys to the Pacific and the Sierra Oriental.”

Leading to the other interesting link (I let you explore :) at the University of Michigan: Nomads + Nanomaterial, Sustainable Textile Building Technologies in Architecture

remember my body is a hypertext? A friend sent me this: scan my skin! Not the same aims, but close :) :)

project number . 20050816

medium . ink or washable tattoo
my identity has shrunk to my skin…
<< I link therefore I am >> says WJM
my tattoo is no more a barcode that one scans
for revealing the identity of a product
the extension of my body is a url
we exist because of the envelope, the image
which is drawn, written, or projected onto it
our skin is a state of mind, a habitat, and our identity
the last private space?
my body is a hypertext