Week 6

Posted by BMadmin on Tuesday Oct 9, 2007 Under Uncategorized

Holy crap! A new wi-fi wearable has hit the market!
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/20382

Unfortunately it looks like my collaboration with the fashion students will not be possible, since my project doesn’t really fit into their criteria or their own project timelines. So after I finalize my determination on what technology I will be using I will focus again on the appearance and possibilities for making my wearable.

I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day about my project and what the latest concept / developments were. I wanted to do something maybe a little edgy and disruptive, but after discovering how illegal it was and discussing the fact that even being disruptive or annoying wouldn’t really be a good way to achieved my idea of using mobile technology for public interaction.  We talked about the difference between my rural life experience and her life experience growing up in the city; People in the city choose to insulate themselves with a cellphone/ipods because they don’t wish to be harassed by strangers, promotors or beggars.

Like discussed in Georg Simmel’s “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, the 7th section deals with the mental attitude of people who live in the city. “Partly this psychological fact, partly the right to distrust which men have in the face of the touch-and-go elements of metropolitan life, necessitates our reserve.” So in order to overcome the technological barriers that mobile technology offers, I must first over come the social conditioning of the average city dweller.

All of this has brought me to my latest concept to pull off this project. Which is to literally become the medium of mobile  technology.

I could rig up a system where people could hook up thier cells/ipods/whatever to my wearable system and use them ‘off’ of me.

The second idea is that I would already have those devices embedded in a wearable system and people could control how they were used. (eg. Someone could make a phone call by talking at/through me and I’d have mics and speakers rigged up) I could also have some cosmetic lighting effects that would occur depending on the level or length of interaction.