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| Katherine Moriwaki received her Masters degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Programm at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Her work has appeared in IEEE Spectrum Magazine, and has been exhibited at Siggraph, NYU, and Lincoln Center. Most recently she has worked as an electronic art consultant for ABCDEF, an exhibition that will be held in el Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Her current work in wearable technology and fashion converge with technological advances to form new modalities of expression; Katherine is a Design Fellow at the Center of New Design of Parsons. Contribution: The Epidermic Interface: New Directions in Wearable Technology and Fashion. Wearable technologies in a mobile, networked environment will take the interface into the "real world" both literally and metaphorically, as our bodies become the interface, mediated through handheld, body-mounted, or embedded clothing devices. Current technology and research has come a long way in making wearable computing a reality, with smaller, stronger batteries, sophisticated sensing mechanisms, and powerful, compact hardware. And yet, wearables do not have mainstream acceptance. Everyday people do not want to wear harnesses and head-mounted displays. Even the areas of military and industrial wearables (for construction, medical, or safety) require tools with elegant design that make the wearer both look and feel good. Current wearable systems, as envisioned by the likes of Steve Mann and Thad Starner offensively challenge the wearer to sublimate their humanity in order to enhance oneself mechanically. However, the future of wearables lies precisely in a human-centered integration of man and machine. In order to fulfill the potential that wearable computing presents to the evolution of interface design, many elements must be taken into account; ergonomics, wearability, network technologies, and input and output. But even beyond this, wearables must engage the wearer as fashion, through the mechanisms of fashion, without resorting to cliché or novel forms. Wearables must become more than mere mediators of perception. They must become communicators of style. |
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