Essay About Fashion Sensing And Mobile Phones

Fashion Sensing
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FASHION SENSING / FASHIONING SENSE
A CONVERSATIO N ABOUT A ESTHET ICS WITH INTERNATIONAL
FASHION MACHI NES M A G GI E ORTH
b y A n ne G a l l o w a y
Textiles are one of humanitys oldest technologies, and costuming has
always been central to cultural and personal identity. Clothes and
accessories mark and communicate our similarities and differences. In
terms of social interaction, cross-cultural encounters are both
facilitated and constrained by fashion, be it external body modifications
like tattoos and piercings, or clothing and accessories like jewellery,
bags and – increasingly – technological devices like mobile phones.
Social and cultural researchers often approach the question of
consumption in capitalist societies as a primary way for people to
express and negotiate identity, preferences, and social status. As
computing and communication technologies become increasingly
mobile, they also become increasingly wearable. That is, we can
personalise the looks and sounds of digital devices, and use them as
fashion accessories. The practical functionality of these devices is
increasingly being augmented by their ability to explore and express
our aesthetics and identities.
Maggie Orth is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of International
Fashion Machines [www.ifmachines.com/] – an artist and technologist
who designs and invents interactive textiles in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Her doctoral work at MITs Media Lab (1997-2001)
included patents, research, publications, and design in new physical
interfaces, wearable computing, electronic textiles, and interactive
textile musical instruments. Orth describes herself as someone who
“looks forward to the challenge of making beautiful, practical, and
wearable art fashion and technology products a reality”. I spoke to
Orth in July, 2004 about how mobile and wearable technologies are
being used as aesthetic or expressive – rather than purely functional –
devices, and what is at stake in these increasingly fluid relations
between technology, art, nature, and culture.
Anne Galloway: As mobile and wearable computing becomes
increasingly common in everyday life, I wonder how our relationships
with technology are changing. Historically, computing seems to be
more concerned with function than form – what a machine could do was
more important than how it looked. But now, for example, mobile
phones can be personalized with different faceplates or ring tones,
leading some people to describe them as expressions or extensions of
our identities.
Maggie Orth: This is a complex area. In most computers software is
the function – the form has for a very long time been neutral beige,
with little identity. I recently heard a discussion in which someone said
that that was because computers are extensions of our minds, our
selves, and as such we want them to have no separate visual identity,
to be neutral. I think that computers have managed to remain neutral
beige for so long because their function is based on their interiors,
their software. But I also find it intriguing to think that, as extensions
of our mind – which is invisible to ourselves and incorporeal – they have
had, up until recently, little visual identity. Software can change a
computers function or meaning with the push of the button, but the
form remains neutral.
AG: Im really interested in this neutrality. I tend to see it as a way to
naturalize or normalize technology – to make it appear innocuous and
somehow beyond critique. And that makes me feel powerless, or at the
mercy of technology. In other words, I dont see my hopes and dreams
reflected in most computing technologies.
MO: Well, artists are striving to change that, to de-neutralize the beige
box. I think that de-neutralizing technology provides people with more
choices, and also humanizes it. It reflects our need for experience and
feeling. We are not merely productive or functional – like so much
computing – and de-neutralizing technology makes it more a reflection
of our aesthetic selves.
AG: I like the idea that a de-neutralized technology is more in line with
my aesthetic self. It seems softer, more human – not so hard and
machine-like.
MO: I think soft computing, like e-textiles, adds an important new
dimension to how humans think about, react [to], and interact with
technology. From a more traditional aesthetic perspective, it expands