ThinkerBelle Fibre Optic EEG Amplifying Dress at ISWC Design Exhibition, Osaka, Japan

I’m just back from an amazing trip to Japan where I exhibited my ThinkerBelle EEG Amplifying Dress at the Design Exhibition of the 19th International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC). This event was part of the 2015 ACM joint international conference of ISWC and Ubicomp, which took place this year at Grand Front Osaka, Japan.

ThinkerBelle EEG Amplifying Dress

I exhibited the dress alongside garments, accessories, textiles and devices, in the wearable tech categories of functional, aesthetic and fibre arts. If you’d like to read my paper on the ThinkBelle EEG Dress it is available from ACM or ask me for a copy.

ThinkerBelle EEG Amplifying Dress

ThinkerBelle EEG Amplifying Dress in Tokyo!

Many thanks to this year’s Design Exhibition chairs Margarita Benitez and Halley Profita and jury panel: Maggie Orth, Sonny Vu, Tricia Flanagan and Frances Joseph.

Thad Starner’s keynote at Wear and Tear workshop.

At ISWC / Ubicomp I participated in two workshops, firstly Wear and Tear: Constructing Wearable Technology for The Real World. This was organised by colleagues at Georgia Tech Wearable Computing Centre and was a really useful and enjoyable day of reportage on building devices and systems. Thad Starner gave the keynote and was followed by various speakers who discussed what went right and what went wrong during the process of building their devices. Everyone shared useful approaches, tips and tricks to fixing issues and developing hardware and devices. A big thank you to the organisers: Peter Presti, Scott Gilliland, Abdelkareem Bedri, Clint Zeagler and Thad Starner, and the speakers, for a brilliant day.

Andy Quitmeyer’s soldering station shorts at Wear and Tear workshop.

The second workshop I participated in was Broadening Participation. The event was created to increase the involvement of women, all students from developing countries, as well as underrepresented minorities, including persons with disabilities, in the field of ubiquitous and wearable computing. The day comprised of interesting and motivational talks and panels from those already working in the field of ubiquitous and wearable computing. There was also two poster sessions where participants discussed their research. I presented a poster on my doctoral research on Responsive and Emotive Wearables. I really enjoyed meeting and sharing my research with participants as well as hearing about their research, which was really interesting and there were some great crossover projects and research, which I’m going to follow up. Thanks very much to organisers: A. J. Brush, Miwako Doi, Gillian Hayes, Polly Huang, Judy Kay, Hitomi Tsujita, I.E. Yairi, Naomi Yamashita and Helen Ai He, and the speakers, for a great day.

Attendees of the Broadening Participation Workshop.

Baroesque Barometric Skirt in New Scientist & on show at Microsoft Research, Redmond, USA

As we trundle into the dark winter days of 2014, I will be locking myself away to write, so I won’t be traveling to show my work in any exciting cities for a while.

So, just a couple of nuggets of recent news on my Baroesque Barometric Skirt – I was delighted to hear that it had been featured in the ‘One Per Cent’ column in New Scientist Magazine, September 27th issue, which reported on it being shown at the ISWC (International Symposium on Wearable Computing) Design Exhibition at the EMP Museum in Seattle last September. If you’d like to read my paper on the skirt it is available from the ACM or ask me for a copy.

The Baroesque Barometric Skirt featured in New Scientist

Me being chuffed in Smiths with a copy of New Scientist

The Baroesque Barometric Skirt was also on display at Microsoft Research Gallery during September and October, which was organised by Asta Roseway of Microsoft Research and Troy Natchtigall, chair of the ISWC Design Exhibition. The skirt, which is part of my PhD practice should be winging its way back to me soon and I’m looking forward to being reunited with it.

Baroesque Barometric Skirt exhibited at the Microsoft Research Gallery in Redmond, WA, USA. Image by kind permission of James Hallam of Georgia Tech, whose Ballet Hero garment is also featured in this photo.

Some of the other exhibits on show at Microsoft Research Gallery. Images by kind permission of James Hallam.

Whilst in Seattle at ISWC, I took advantage of the interesting decor of the Motif Hotel to make a new video of the skirt. Many thanks to Johnny Farringdon for being my cameraman 🙂

International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC) 14 Design Exhibition at Experience Music Project Museum (EMP), Seattle, USA

For me, the highlight of the ISWC / UbiComp conference was exhibiting my Baroesque Barometric Skirt in the ISWC Design Exhibition and conference reception. This year the ISWC Design Exhibition was held at the Experience Music Project Museum (EMP) in Seattle, which is an amazing venue with a three-storey screen on which videos of our work were shown and also houses a permanent exhibition dedicated to pop culture and music. Because I took so many photos (and made a video) I’m giving the event it’s own page so that it doesn’t take over my main ISWC blog post! This year I didn’t meet all the other exhibitors during the Design Exhibition set up, so I can’t do a full report on all the exhibits, but a full list of the Functional and Aesthetic wearables can be found on the ISWC program (Tues: EMP Reception/Design Exhibition link).

Experience Music Project Museum (EMP), Seattle, USA.

ISWC 2014 is my third year of being honoured to have my responsive and emotive wearable tech work accepted by the Design Exhibition jury: in 2012 I had three wearables accepted for ISWC held at Newcastle University, UK, and last year in 2013, my EEG Visualising Pendant was accepted for exhibiting at ISWC at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

This year I was extremely happy to take my Baroesque Barometric Skirt to ISWC Seattle to exhibit. The skirt visualises data in the form of four independent RGB LED strips from four sensors, three of them are environmental and are: ambient temperature, pressure and altitude, the forth is a temperature sensor that sits on the inside of the skirt and pulls in the wearer’s body temperature. My motivation for creating the skirt is that I am interested in how we can display our physiological data alongside that of the environment or ‘bigger picture’ of elements that we are surrounded by. The skirt changes visually as the wearer moves around environments and also as the body reacts to its present situation. This garment-device starts a conversation around the connections between the environmental and physiological data of the wearer. The Baroesque Barometric skirt contributes a new way of sensing and presenting environmental and physiological data together. My paper on the skirt can be found in the conference proceedings and is available here or via ACM, but if you have any problems you can get a copy from me.

Troy welcomes attendees to the Design Exhibition at the EMP.

Many thanks to Design Exhibition Chair Troy Nachtigall for heroic work on organising the whole shebang from submissions to the show at the amazing EMP Museum, which looked stunning and also to the jury: Maggie Orth, Rosa Asteway, Zoe Romano and Meg Grant and not forgetting the ISWC volunteers.

Links to my main post on ISWC and ISWC Doctoral School Colloquium.

My Baroesque Barometric Skirt video shown on EMP’s three-floor high video wall!

A selection of images of wearables from the Design Exhibition:

Innovative Explorations in Apparel Design to Create Engineered Outfits with Lighting Technologies by Eric Beaudette et al.

TWINY emotional logging by Sara Ferraro et al.

Ballet Hero: Building a Garment for Memetic Embodiment in Dance Learning by James Hallam & Emily Keen et al – winner of the Functional Design Award.

Flowers on a Pond – solar LED Dress by Anna Perry.

Digital Lace: A Collision of Responsive Technologies by Sarah Taylor and Sara Robertson – winner of the Aesthetic Design Award.

S.A.R.A. – synesthetic augmented reality application by Margarita Benitez, Markus Vogl.

Oiko-Nomic Threads by Marinos Koutsomichalis, Afroditi Psarra and Maria Varela.

‘TellMe’: Therapeutic Clothing for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Daily Life (background) by Helen Koo.

Me standing by my Baroesque Barometric Skirt and wearing my EEG Visualising Pendant.