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| Sabine Seymour's current work is based in the convergence of fashion, wearable and wireless technologies, design and architecture. She is a design fellow at the Center for New Design at Parsons. Sabine founded Moondial Inc., a collective designers, artists and architects in 1998 and has previously worked for Razorfish in new York, Open Systems in New York and Zurich and Compaq in Vienna. She frequently lectures and appears in several publications noting Fortune Magazine and Springerin. Her work has been exhibited at festivals including Ars Electronica and the European Media Arts Festival. She holds a combined MScE from the University of Economics Vienna and Columbia Business School and an MPS in Intercative Telecommunications from NYU. 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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