Panel Statement

Panel: Emotion Studies in a Contemporary Art Debate

As part of my cre­ative re­search, I have been in­ves­ti­gat­ing emo­tional in­ter­faces, tac­tile meth­ods tra­di­tion­ally as­so­ci­ated with women’ work and the in­ter­sec­tion of the so­cial ex­pe­ri­ence and tech­nol­ogy. Gar­ments in­te­grate elec­tron­ics seam­lessly into the so­cial ex­per­i­ment and cre­ate a cor­po­real com­put­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. I am cur­rently an MFA stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Den­ver in the Elec­tronic Media Arts and De­sign pro­gram. I have cre­ated an Instructables.?com tu­to­r­ial on how to con­struct an emoti­con jacket with LCD screen. The focus of the jacket, in­traIn­ter so­cialite, is to cre­ate sub­texts for in­ter­per­sonal human in­ter­ac­tion. The user uses a lim­ited “key­board” with force sen­sors and but­tons under soft sil­i­cone keys to cre­ate com­puter tex­tual sub­ti­tles to human in­ter­ac­tion (tex­tual emoti­cons, i.e. :P). My in­ves­ti­ga­tion with wear­able com­put­ing, par­tic­u­larly with this pro­ject, is an in­quiry into the loss of in­to­na­tion and body lan­guage that oc­curs at the in­ter­sec­tion of com­put­ers and tex­tual com­mu­ni­ca­tion is ev­i­dent in today’s cul­ture.  In this ap­pli­ca­tion, the ef­fort we put into re­plac­ing the nu­ances of per­sonal com­mu­ni­ca­tion with punc­tu­a­tion and tex­tual cues in the vir­tual realm helps sub­ti­tle and en­hance (or con­fuse) the con­ver­sa­tion and in­ter­ac­tion that oc­curs in the phys­i­cal realm. It cre­ates a range of im­plied emo­tion from the wearer. This also in­tro­duces an im­pre­cise con­trol over the emoti­con dis­played and the per­cep­tion of the emoti­con in the con­text of the in­ter­ac­tion. The user has the abil­ity to change the ex­pe­ri­ence of the con­ver- sa­tion when they at­tempt to con­trol the level of emoti­con dis­played. They have the choice to dis­play re­ac­tions that they may or may not choose to por­tray phys­i­cally. This changes who has ac­cess to this form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Tex­tual punc­tu­a­tion be­comes its own graph­i­cally and in­ter­na­tion­ally in­ter­preted lan­guage.

• Stran­sky Mallinger is a na­tive of the greater Cleve­land, Ohio area (US).  Her Sloven­ian her­itage is an im­por­tant in­flu­ence.   It is re­spon­si­ble for her in­ter­est in tac­tile media, par­tic­u­larly medi­ums as­so­ci­ated with “women’s work.”  She is cur­rently a MFA stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Den­ver in the Elec­tronic Media Arts and De­sign pro­gram.  She com­pleted her BFA with a con­cen­tra­tion in Sculp­ture.  The dig­i­tal media pro­gram was in its in­cep­tion and Kristin’s work elec­tronic forms served as a guinea pig for a blos­som­ing pro­gram.  Kristin cur­rently works in eTex­tiles, web con­tent and video, all within the con­text of in­stal­la­tion.  Her in­ter­ests in­clude the po­ten­tial con­flict that ex­ists be­tween the per­sonal/in­ter­nal and the ex­ter­nal spheres in which we all op­er­ate, so­cial in­ter­ac­tion, gen­der so­cial­iza­tion and gen­dered cul­tural ex­pec­ta­tions.

Full text (PDF) p. 1627-1629