Soft electronics: Technology Development as Artistic Practice
The convergence and intermingling of scientific and art/design fields is enabling the creation of new kinds of cultural experiences. Wearable technologies, in particular, are becoming platforms for social interaction, critique, performance, learning, or entertainment. Increasingly, artists and designers are interested in the area of reactive garments: “second skins” that can react to the environment and to the individual. Fashion, health, and telecommunication industries are also pursuing the vision of clothing that can express aspects of people’s personalities, needs, and desires or augment social dynamics through the use and display of aggregate social information. New modes of expression for artists and performers are possible; new forms of fashion and costuming are developing.
Berzowska’s research group, XS Labs, has developed extensive work in the field of electronic textiles and reactive garments over the last six years. This work has been enabled by a Canadian focus on supporting the practice of “research/creation”, which encourages the development of new technologies as an integral component of artistic inquiry and design practice. Berzowska will discuss some of the implications of this kind of hybrid research being carried out in Universities, including the introduction of Human Ethics Research Committee approval, scientific models for managing intellectual property present in the outcomes of “research/creation,” as well as an emphasis towards industry transfer of research results.
Joanna Berzowska is the founder and research director of XS Labs, a design research studio that develops innovative methods and applications in electronic textiles and responsive garments. She is Associate Professor of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University and a member of the Hexagram Research Institute in Montreal. She lectures and consults internationally about the field of electronic textiles and related social, cultural, aesthetic, and political issues. Her art and design work has been shown in the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum in NYC, the V&A in London, the Millenium Museum in Beijing, SIGGRAPH, ISEA, the Art Directors Club in NYC, the Australian Museum in Sydney, NTT ICC in Tokyo, and Ars Electronica Center in Linz among others. Her research is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Canadian Heritage, Hexagram Institute for Research/Creation in Media Arts and Technologies, and the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC). She was recently selected for the Maclean’s 2006 Honour Roll as one of “thirty nine Canadians who make the world a better place to live in”.
