Panel Statement
Chair Persons: Luisa Paraguai & Rachel Zuanon
Presenters: Laura Beloff & Sara Diamond
The wearable computing is a knowledge area in constant development, evoking significant transformations on human/machine communication to configure an effective and affective interface. Those technological artefacts have augmented the personal boundaries redesigning the corporeal schema and lived experiences of bodily spatiality. So, the user’s body is beyond acting the support for those computers understood as a physical reality technologically mediated elaborating behaviours and sensory-motor skills, which works as essential data for recognition of own preferences. Those information exchanges between biological and technological systems have constructed possible dialogues evoking questions and pointing out challenges. The panel with a contemporaneous perspective about the creation and the development of wearable computers concerns with the main aspects of those processes: the design, creation, innovation, mobility, usability and ergonomic perspectives; the fashion, about the body-technology-consume relation; the textile technology, about smart textiles; the sustainability, about recycle materials, use of natural energy as the charger of the mechanical and electronic systems and the development of systems with low energy cost; the networks and technologies, considering the augmentation of the body and mind of human subjects in networks of interactions powered by communication technologies.
- Luisa Paraguai, artist and researcher, studied Civil Engineering and Computing at University of São Paulo, Brazil. She got a master and doctoral degree at the Department of Multimedia, Institute of Arts, UNICAMP, Brazil. She is an Editorial Director at ABCiber (Brazilian Association of Ciberculture Researchers), a Leonardo Digital Reviewer and a visiting researcher-in-residence at Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, UK, researching about the social implications of wearable computers. She has presented her artworks at national and international exhibitions as 4D Interactive Computational Art, 2004, Brasília, Cinetic_Digital – Itau Cultural 2005, São Paulo, Mostra SESC Artes 2010 in São Paulo, and SIGGRAPH 2005.
- Rachel Zuanon is media artist and designer. She is a researcher and professor in the MA Design Program at the Anhembi Morumbi University. She coordinates the CNPq research group “Design: creation, language and technology” and the study group “Design of Physical-Digital Interfaces”. She holds a PhD in Communication and Semiotics (PUC-SP). She is a partner-director of the Zuannon Integrated Solutions in Design, Interactivity and Technology, a company focused in development of projects and interactive solutions for physical and digital environments. She has presented her research in a variety of places, such as: M-Connect 2010; ISEA2008 and ISEA2002; Consciousness Reframed 2008 and 2004, among others.