This document provides an overview of Camille Baker's work in smart fashion, wearable technology, and performance. Some key points:
- Baker's PhD from 2006-2011 explored using mobile devices and wearables in performance through her project "MINDtouch."
- Since then, her work has focused on topics like responsive environments, curating digital/electronic art, and conducting workshops on wearables.
- Her current project "Hacking the Body 2.0" explores using biometric data and open source tools to create interactive experiences for participants. This involves developing smart garments, sensors, and participatory performances.
2. • smart fashion, conductive
textiles, wearable tech;
• mobile video art and
performance,
• video, electronic and
interactive installation
• networked/telematic &
participatory performance;
• responsive environments
design and interaction;
• curating digital, electronic,
interactive art and
performance media.
current research interests
online portfolio http://www.swampgirl67.net/still from PhD project MINDtouch 2011
3. SMARTlab PhD media art research 2006-2011:
MINDtouch mobile performance
–to uncover any new understandings of the
sensations of ‘liveness’ and ‘presence’ that may
emerge when using mobile technologies and
wearable devices in performance contexts–
still from MINDtouch 2010
4. MINDtouch: mobile devices as non-verbal expression
first video collection workshop in Vancouver June 2007
5. key points
Image from MINDtouch 2007 Dublin
MINDtouch: mobile devices as non-verbal
expression
6. MINDtouch: video collection workshops : 2007-2009
C. Baker - stills from participants’ videos from Dublin workshop October 2007
7. MINDtouch: video collection workshops : 2007-2009
C. Baker - stills from participants’ videos from Vancouver workshop July 2007 and Dublin workshop October 2007
9. MINDtouch: still of mixes for broadcast 2010-2011
image of live participant video mixes: MINDtouch C.Baker 2009
10. MINDtouch: example event & user participation
Images from live events for MINDtouch C.Baker 2009-2010
11. ict-art-connect.eu
• ICT & Art Connect London West
January 18 & 19th, 2014
Watermans Art Centre
(Brunel’s consultation & matchmaking)
FET-Art/ICT & Art Connect: EU Project 2013-14
12. ict-art-connect.eu
ICT & Art Connect London
East: Ravernbourne,
White Building & Bookclub
February 22 & 23rd, 2014
(Brunel’s consultation &
matchmaking)
FET-Art/ICT & Art Connect: EU Project 2013-14
13. ict-art-
Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the EC,
mentioned ICT & Art Connect as one of the
"great ideas" she witnessed at ICT 2013 for
the EU's ICT research and innovation
programme – Horizon 2020
http://t.co/KjZUTmxfnb
Robert Madelin, Director General of the
EC called for” artists and technologists to
help us make sense of/own our future”, as a
result of seeing ICT & Art Connect
presentations.
Brussels event participants’ showcase at
EC Parliament. Imperica’s article:
http://www.imperica.com/en/features/europe
an-futures-connecting-art-and-technology
Award for stand with most buzz at EU’s own event
ICT 2013 in Vilnius, November 6-8, 2013
FET-Art/ICT & Art Connect: EU Project 2013-14
18. Stitch, Bitch, Make/Perform, started
November 2014 with Melissa Coleman,
supported by Irini Papadimitriou, Director
of the V&A Digital Progammes.
The focus is on the current wearable
tech and etextile issues:
-How we can add more critical and
aesthetic voices to the wearable tech
discourse
-From art, design and performance focus
-To help shape future directions in
design & development
research activities 2014-15
19. publicity
Fashion and technology marketing interview on Stitch, Bitch, Make/
Perform and my practice, June 2015. http://interlaced.co/project/interview-
camille-baker/
20. New Directions in Mobile Media Art and
Performance
S.A.R.A. is an interactive software app for mobile computing devices by Margarita Benitez and Markus Vogl http://benitezvogl.com/
21. Intersecting Art and Technology in
Practice: Techne/Technique/Technology
There must be something in the water Artists: Jeanette Angel, Hanss Lujan, Kenneth Newby and Aleksandra Dulic
22. Book chapter: Curating the Digital – eds.
David England, Thecla Schiphorst, Nick
Bryan-Kinns
based on CHI 2014 workshop on Human Computer Interaction and Art Curating
24. Graphic by Dave Palmer 2012
Hacking the Body - 1st Iteration
an ongoing collaboration
with dance artist
/choreographer Kate
Sicchio
25. Hacking the Body
…using data from the body –
using open source tools, with
biomedical with handmade soft
circuit electronic sensors, to
create new visual and interactive
activities for participants to
experience, engage, and play
with…
Images by Kate Sicchio 2011, Kasia Molga 2012 and Camille Baker 2010
…using their mobile media and gaming devices
(Xbox, Kinect, Wii).
26. Graphic by Dave Palmer 2012
“Hacking is in a dialogic form, not in
dialetic opposition. Not to operate
with its object as an opponent or foe,
but as a field of gravity. Not regarding
a system of belief as opium, but as a
path of liberation, using it as a
trampoline, as a line of flight and a
force of gravity” (von Busch and
Palmås, 2006:59).
Repurposes but
Recognises the original
31. HTB workshops June 2013
ISEA 2013, Workshop, Sydney
Australia – June 9th, 2013
Tek* 2013, Workshop, Byron Bay,
Australia – June 15th, 2013
Creativity and Cognition 2013,
Workshop, Sydney Australia –
June 17th, 2013
34. - wearable technology and sensing
devices in dance and participatory
performance.
- novel uses of body data from
wearable sensing devices as
choreographic or performance
devising material and research.
- ethics of data collection and how
knowledge of it influences identity
and expression in performance.
- making bespoke sensors and
Smart Garments (wearable tech)
as research.
Hacking The Body 2.0
51. Thank you & questions
hackingthebody.co.uk
hackingthebody.wordpress.com
camillebaker.me
swampgirl67.net
social
@hacking_body (instagram & twitter)
Notas do Editor
The mobile media performance project, MINDtouch: Ephemeral Transference, was completed in 2010 and published in 2011.
Theoretically, I was exploring the embodiment of the network through mobile media and wearable devices, again using the concept of telepathy but now as more of a metaphor for sending experiences and presence over the network – Pre-iPhone!
4
Users ‘VJ-ed’ or mixed video from a database live, and their body data collected by wireless sensors worn by in-person participants, triggered visual mixing, adding visual effects in real time to create abstract visual conversations with other mobile users, creating a collaborative collage of externalised body sensations.
MINDtouch critically investigated, challenged, and extended the potential of performance practice using mobile video to emulate telepathy and “performing” through the network. around the world.
The live participants performed structured improvised activities, guided by me, and experimented with the mobile ‘video collection’ activities in two separate but connected groups.
It was an imperative to connect the in-person participants to the online remote participants and to enable them to sense or ‘feel’ each other more tangibly, sensing each other by sending their body data through the network to ‘touch’ one another with their own video expressions of inner experience and sensations.
This created a feedback loop of body-to-body connection through digital translation, interacting with personal interpretations and the mobile networks – a digitally embodied touch and exchange.
In the live setting, the body data that controlled the video effects and mixing was displayed on an LCD monitor or projection for the live participants and streamed for remote participants.
This video collage became a collaborative, narrative and global mobile-cast, converging distinct technologies and practices, bringing all the different virtual ‘presences’ together on the visual mix, simulating ‘collective consciousness’.
The result was mixed, VJ-ed, abstract visual exchanges with other mobile users around the world, in a collaborative, telematic collage of externalised body sensations.
Above are stills of visual material “performed” live over the mobile networks and the internet.
21
All “performances” took place in non-traditional performance environments like parties
This book explores new and varied artistic and performative projects that have emerged since the onset of the smartphone. It will showcase new art works that use mobile devices within digital art and performance as an evolving medium for artistic expression, with particular concerns for mobile in live art, dance, immersive theatre and music and other forms as well as wearable technologies that have enabled this change.
Techne/technique/technology is an edited book from the perspective of the artist who makes digital and electronic technology-based art.
The primary focus is on the artistic process, creativity and collaboration, and personal approaches to creation and ideation in making this type of artwork.
Unlike other writing in the field, this book is less interested in the outcome itself: the artefact, artwork or performance, but instead highlights the emotional, intellectual, intuitive, instinctive and step-by-step creation dimensions. I
t aims to dissect the thinking and doing by the artist in each stage, including the turmoil or problem-encounters and how to solve issues in the intimate dimension of making artwork.
This chapter broadly addresses the activities and revelations resulting from the author’s coordination of the European Commission funded project, FET-Art from September 2013- June 2014 as they pertain to the CHI 2014 workshop April 2014 on Curating the Digital: Spaces for Art and Interaction theme of “fostering collaborations between artists and technologists via Catalog”.
It covers some of the findings and outcomes of the EU funded FET-Art project, which included performances, exhibitions, and artist-technologist matchmaking events, which led to collaborative residencies around Europe during an intensive 9-month period. These outcomes, and my experience in coordinating the artistic dimension of this project, were to contribute to the workshop discussion on the issues of Art-Tech collaboration for the CHI workshop.
This chapter broadly addresses the activities and revelations resulting from the author’s coordination of the European Commission funded project, FET-Art from September 2013- June 2014 as they pertain to the CHI 2014 workshop April 2014 on Curating the Digital: Spaces for Art and Interaction theme of “fostering collaborations between artists and technologists via Catalog”.
It covers some of the findings and outcomes of the EU funded FET-Art project, which included performances, exhibitions, and artist-technologist matchmaking events, which led to collaborative residencies around Europe during an intensive 9-month period. These outcomes, and my experience in coordinating the artistic dimension of this project, were to contribute to the workshop discussion on the issues of Art-Tech collaboration for the CHI workshop.
This is… READ SCREEN
The conceptual framework behind it has been focussed on recent rhetoric and practices of personal code mining and data collection, and how we can access, yet question the variety of parameters of body information and the states of being.
‘Hacking the Body’ version 1, centred on ways to train & engage performers in using emerging technologies and devices, as a means to enhance their creative process, but also to devise new forms of immersive experiences for audiences.
Our objective was to explore ways in which human physical states could be meaningfully exposed in the network and repurposed, thereby 'hacking the body'.
Hacking the Body’ used an open, solution-driven, hands-on ethos as the main principle of hacking employed to investigate and make novel art and performance works.
This first iteration also used the ‘hacking’ ethos as a starting point to re-imagine uses for and re-purpose internal signals from the body.
Hacker ethics are concerned primarily with sharing, openness, collaboration, and engaging in the hands-on imperative, which we employed in Hacking the Body version 1.
Hackers created a methodology that we employed in Hacking the Body.
We drew upon various discourses to further hacking as a method for collaborative modes of making performance and interactive works.
READ SCREEN
Using various Hacker/ Maker techniques to ‘Hack” biofeedback data from the body (using handmade soft circuit sensors), we explored creating visual and interactive performative activities for participants to engage in and play using their mobile and gaming devices.
We used mainly handmade and soft sensors with conductive fabrics, inks and threads, but in the current or future iterations we intend to embed etextile sensors into bio-fabrics (made from fungus, milk or other materials and processes) to create natural and and more ethical sustatinable interfaces, which also easier and more comfortable for performers to perform in.
As part of the giving back to the community dimension of hacker ethics, we facilitated three workshops in Australia 2013 as part of three different festivals and conferences –teaching soft-circuits, wearable electronics, and the basics of
Arduino coding.
As a spinoff of version 1 Hacking the Body, and the Australian workshops, we were invited to teach very basic soft circuits to kids (and their parents) at the Science Museum last year.
With exponentially increased corporate development of wearable technology for fitness and health, Hacking the Body 2.0 is slightly different performance investigation, looking at body data and states of the body, from the point of view of data ethics and personal identity through code. We still hope to re-imagine the uses of this code, re-code or repurpose them into live choreographed performances using custom-made smart costumes and exploring new approaches to live audience experience and engagement through wearable sensing, actuation and intervention directly to and on the dancers’ bodies.
[Play video] https://vimeo.com/133353621 11
The touch sensors are being embedded in a pleated fabric.
The pleats will encase the conductive materials that act as antennae for a series of capacitive touch sensors. The conductive materials are aligned all in one direction, or may form a grid structure.
The software on the computer (and eventually on an iPad or mobile phone) will register which garment's actuators are listening to which sensors. It then sends the messages from the touch sensors to the correct actuator.
The actuators in the garments are small motors to control the tightening and loosening of elastic bands to create a squeezing sensation on the body that the dancer will interpret as a form of communication from the other dancer and respond in movement.
One of the main aspects of the costume design is that we are working with Tara Baoth Mooney whose fashion design work has been centred on sustainable fashion, and we wanted to bring in another ethical dimension to the work, with an eventual aim toward more sustainable and ethical technologies and textiles in the future iterations.
Feel Me is a choreography for two dancers. The timing of the movement of one dancer is determined by the other dancer's breath rate. Each dancer feels the other dancer's breath in the form of haptic vibrations on their body. The breath is read through the modified OmSignal shirt, a commercial device that reads biological data from the body and transmits to your smartphone through a custom app developed by Peter Todd. By hacking this device we have created a new choreography for these performers from their own breath.
Flutter Stutter is an improvisational dance piece that uses soft circuit sensors to trigger sound and haptic actuators in the form of a small motor that tickles the performers. Dancers embody the flutter of the motor and respond with their own movement that reflects this feeling. The sensors and actuators are bespoke designs by Becky Stewart and Tara Baoth Mooney that interact, influence and interrupt the dance and hack the body.
Flutter Stutter is an improvisational dance piece that uses soft circuit sensors to trigger sound and haptic actuators in the form of a small motor that tickles the performers. Dancers embody the flutter of the motor and respond with their own movement that reflects this feeling. The sensors and actuators are bespoke designs by Becky Stewart and Tara Baoth Mooney that interact, influence and interrupt the dance and hack the body.
Feel Me is a choreography for two dancers. The timing of the movement of one dancer is determined by the other dancer's breath rate. Each dancer feels the other dancer's breath in the form of haptic vibrations on their body. The breath is read through the modified OmSignal shirt, a commercial device that reads biological data from the body and transmits to your smartphone through a custom app developed by Peter Todd. By hacking this device we have created a new choreography for these performers from their own breath.