HOLES IN THE BODY
a couple of years ago i wrote an article titled “The Future of Wearables” for Rhizome. in my article i profiled designer Elise Co and her fantastic work. from a very early start elise has been ahead of the curve, working on challenging ideas which remain relevant in this quickly moving area. (previous blog posts mentioning elise can be found here.)
one of her projects, Perforation (1999) struck me as especially poetic and beautiful. challenging the physicality of the body “through transparency”, a mass of fiber optic cables transfer light from one side of the body to the other.
Elise Co’s “Perforation”
in (2001) we see the concept of a “hole in the body” re-appear in IDEO’s award winning e-fashion concepts. in a design team led by Naoto Fukasawa a video camera is used to take images from the front of the body and display them on an LCD screen on the back.
IDEO’s e-fashion conceptsand this year, at ISEA 2004, we see a piece by Diana Burgoyne which transfers light from a flashlight from the back of the body to the front.
Diana Burgoyne and model at the ISEA 2004 fashion show in Tallinn, Estoniathis makes me think of Erkki Huhtamo’s talk at ISEA on Media Archaeology… and the recurring “topoi” of the immaterial body.
September 2nd, 2004 at 5:04 pm
Wow. What prosaic spam!
September 2nd, 2004 at 5:05 pm
Um, that would be the first comment - not your post
September 2nd, 2004 at 11:08 pm
The military has been working on this for years. If perfected, it would provide total camouflage like the alien in the movie Predator.
September 3rd, 2004 at 9:33 am
sorry about the comment spam - i’ve deleted it, but my two options are to ban all comments completely or put up with occasional off topic posts.
in response to paul - you’re right, the military has been working on this - i forgot to also add a few other projects that deal with (in the artistic sense) “immateriality” or “invisiblity” (military) - but i also think the projects in this post look less at total camoflague and more at the idea of being inbetween ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’, or of the porous nature of our own materiality.
still, thanks for pointing out the military angle. perhaps i’ll post a follow-up from that perspective.
September 13th, 2004 at 3:46 pm
an ex-media labber, jofish kaye, took a similar prototype that he had rigged for the original MIT wearables show and used it to be the painting of that guy in the bowler hat with a hole in his chest for halloween
September 13th, 2004 at 3:50 pm
that’s great lucy! do you have a link? though i guess not…