19 - Wearable technology for the performing arts

Abstract

Wearable computers are devices worn on the body giving the potential for digital interaction in the world. A new stage of computing technology at the beginning of the 21st century links the personal and the pervasive through mobile wearables. The convergence between the miniaturisation of microchips (nanotechnology), intelligent textile or interfacial materials production, advances in biotechnology and the growth of wireless, ubiquitous computing emphasizes not only mobility but integration into clothing or the human body. In artistic contexts one expects such integrated wearable devices to have the two-way function of interface instruments (e.g. sensor data acquisition and exchange) worn for particular purposes, either for communication with the environment or various aesthetic and compositional expressions. This chapter on wearables in performance briefly surveys the history of wearables in the performance arts and distinguishes stand-alone and performative interfacial garments. It then focuses on ‘design in motion’, digital performance in augmented reality and VR installations, carefully examining the prototype development at the DAP-Lab (UK) involving transdisciplinary intersections between fashion and dance, interactive system architecture, electronic textiles, wearable technologies, and digital animation. The concept of an ‘evolving’ garment design that is materialized (mobilized) in live performance between partners originates from DAP-Lab’s experimentation with telematics and distributed media addressing the ‘connective tissues’ and ‘wearabilities’ of film through a study of shared embodiment and perception/proprioception in the wearer (tactile sensory processing) and the wearer/designer/viewer relationship. These notions of wearability are applied to the immediate sensory processing on the performer’s body and to the processing of the responsive, animate environment, and then extended to include recent advances in VR technology. The chapter concludes with a critical reflection on unfulfilled promises of embodied wearable performance, indicating that in spite of the ubiquitous context of commercially available wearables (such as mobile phones), the art arena of experimental performance reflects an increasing disinterest in technological agency.