Sabine Seymour, CEO of moondial edited the Fashionable Technology book:

The interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, wearables for short, and fashion, design and science is a highly promising and topical subject. Offered here is a compact survey of the theory involved and an explanation of the role technology plays in a fabric or article of clothing. The practical application is explained in detail and numerous illustrations serve as clarification. Over 50 well-known designers, research institutes, companies and artists, among them Philips, Burton, MIT Media Lab, XS Labs, New York University, Hussein Chalayan, Cute Circuit or International Fashion Machines are introduced by means of their latest, often still unpublished, project, and a survey of their work to date. Given for the first time is a list of all the relevant information on research institutes, materials, publications etc. A must for all those wishing to know everything about fashionable technology.

The work of Cati Vaucelle is featured in this book! She mentions Touch.Sensitive, the project I collaborated on with her :)

This is why technology simply cannot and will not recreate what it is like to be in a meeting with people somewhere else. People, who have bodies, cannot inhabit virtual space. Hubert Dreyfus, a philosophy professor, puts it more poetically: “Tele-hugs won’t do it.”

Read the article by John Thackara: The fake-space race: design and the future of travel.

My next piece of furniture? Info via Swissmiss.

This Inflatable Lounger (GBP 20; about $40) built-in two speakers that you can connect your i-Pod, MP3 player, or CD player. It also has another desirable feature to make you time at sea more enjoyable. The Inflatable Lounger features it is easy to inflate and deflate, and does not need batteries or power cables. Of course, most important of all, it has a acceptable price.

The design findings of this weekend…

Exhibited at the Dansk Design Center… Muuto: Pil Bredahl’s OTO100:

Kaare Klint’s Safari chair (1933) was inspired by an English camp chair. It was one of the first Danish chairs that could be taken apart and delivered unassembled. Materials: Ash-natural or smoked. Manufacturer: Rud Rasmussen, Denmark.

An email from my dear friend in Switzerland:

i am in switzerland moving out from my apartment: a sweet dump i had rented since i am a student, filled with paintings from my grand father, mom’s carpets, and leather coated books. i never had to let go of so many evocative objects at once. a bit overwhelming really, but i guess i will feel lighter once i am done. good i have my “final home” coat, a gift from my japanese friend noboyuki….

Just a quick note to let you know that Michel Maffesoli has agreed to contribute to our book. Maffesoli is the author of the well-known and much quoted Times of the Tribes.

Seen with Oren on the streets of Copenhagen… I can’t but share it with you… Have you ever seen an espresso machine on a bike before??? Ole, is the driver. He was working in the coffee industry before. Now he designed this mobile coffee shop “Welcome to my lounge” he says. “Tomorrow there will be music… Some Bossa Nova. Bossa Nova and coffee, or Jazz… there isn’t anything better really!” “In big coffee shops, the coffee is not as fresh.” Ole buys his coffee from 3 local shops (Roasted there) in Copenhagen. A friend helped him build the top of the vehicle. The bike? A company designs these kind of bikes. In the trunk on the front of the vehicle, he has 300(?) cups… I have tasted: THE COFFEE IS A MIRACLE!

Nouvelles technologies du soi, mobilités et (co-)constructions identitaires
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New technologies of the self, mobilities and (co-)constructions of identities

Edited by:

Fred Dervin, Senior Lecturer,
Department of French Studies, University of Turku, Finland
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Yasmine Abbas,
Doctor of Design, Harvard, USA
ReD Associates, Denmark

To be published in Autumn 2009

SYNOPSIS extraits/excerpts:

L’hypermobilité physique comme virtuelle qui touche les individus contemporains conduit à multiplier les récits et discours sur les rencontres avec les autres, mais aussi avec soi-même. Qu’ils soient issus de migrants, membres de diasporas, réfugiés, personnes en mobilité à court ou long-terme, résidents virtuels, internautes, etc., ces témoignages sont transmis à travers différents média et espaces personnels et publics: du simple coup de téléphone au site internet et à l’e-mail, ou à travers des autobiographies, des témoignages écrits et oraux, des articles de presse, des documentaires, etc. L’avènement de nouveaux espaces relationnels tels que ceux proposés par les Webs 2.0 et 3.0 (weblogs, podcasts, vidéocasts, Facebook, Second Life, Youtube…) offre la possibilité à la fois de faire partager ses expériences de mobilité au quotidien et de construire son soi face à/avec des millions d’interlocuteurs potentiels et ce, de manière multimodale. La présence de ces témoignages de mobilité, qui s’apparentent à des actes de confession, donne accès à des données intéressantes et inédites dans plusieurs langues et cela, de façon illimitée…

The new interpersonal spaces created by web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies seem to correspond to the technologies of the self that Michel Foucault (1988) has addressed in his lectures at the Collège de France at the beginning of the 1980s. These new technologies enable the individual’s self to emerge publicly and to be worked upon with its “disciples”: be they companions in Second Life, readers (for example on a blog) or listeners (Podcasts). With high speed Internet access and increasingly generous capacities of storage (mp3, USB keys, iPhone, portable computers…), the opportunities for staging the self have become unlimited…

MEDIA TREATED: blogs, forum, Life Forms, MMS, moblogging, mondes virtuels, photo et vidéo, photos et vidéos mobiles, robots de compagnie, sites Internet, téléphones portables. | Craigslist, digital artifacts, Del.ici.ous, World of Warcrafts, Facebook, Gaming, Geolocalisation, MMORPG, retail surveillance devices, SilkRoad online, Social Networking, YouTube, WWOOF, Second Life.

THEMES: Photographies en mobilité, espaces relationnels, hétérogénéité culturelle, industries culturelles, identités migratoires, identité hmong, diaspora, NOTICs (Nouveaux Objets issus des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication), infoguerre, mouvement en danse, personnage virtuel, avatars, Autre imaginaire, voyage réel et virtuel | Attachment, backpacking, collection, collective identity, participatory culture, politics, rhythm, second self, tourism, tribalism, virtual nomadism. Attachment, backpacking, collection, collective identity, participatory culture, politics, rhythm, second self, tourism, tribalism, virtual nomadism.

AUTHORS (French version)
Laurence Allard, Université de Lille 3
Biliana Vassileva Fouilhoux, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 3
Alain Bouldoires, Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux 3
Stéphanie Cardoso, Université de Bordeaux
Karim Chibout, Université de Reims, IUT de Troyes, département Services et Réseaux de Communication
Chloé Delaporte, CERLIS (Centre de recherche sur les liens sociaux), Université Paris 3
Nikoleta Kerinska, Université de Paris I Panthéon - Sorbonne
Martial Martin, Université de Reims, IUT de Troyes, département Services et Réseaux de Communication
Moua May-Houa, Université Paris 8, CEMTI (Centre d’étude sur les médias, les technologies et l’internationalisation),
Erika Thomas, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 3 & Lille 3
Nayra Vacaflor, Université Michel de Montaigne - Bordeaux 3

AUTHORS (English version)
Abbas Yasmine, Doctor of Design, Harvard; ReD Associates (Denmark)
Binark Multu, Başkent University, Faculty of Communication, Department of Radio-Television and Cinema, Ankara, Turkey
Brubaker Jed R., Communication, Culture and Technology, Georgetown University, USA
Dervin Fred, University of Turku, Finland
De Vries Katja, Free University of Brussels
Günseli Bayraktutan-Sütcü, Başkent University, Faculty of Communication, Department of Public Relations Ankara, Turkey
Mauco Olivier, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Centre de Recherches Politiques de la Sorbonne (CNRS, UMR 8057), France
O’Reagan Michael, School of Service Management, University of Brighton, UK
Vaucelle Cati, MIT Media Lab, USA

Seen at the exhibit: “Unconcerned But Not Indifferent“, a retrospective on Man Ray at the Pinacothèque, Paris (Exhibit goes until June 1, 2008):