Bauhaus-Universität Weimar: Events

Bodycraft: Designing for the Augmented Body – Fashion Driven Wearables and Secondary Skins

Dr. Amanda Parkes is a fashion technologist with over 10 years experience in interaction design, wearable technology, and fashion innovation. She currently works on high-tech textiles, biomaterials, and body augmentation. She is Chief of Technology and Research at Manufacture NY, a hybrid fashion incubator/factory/research facility in New York, where she leads development of a high-tech R&D space with advanced digital fabrication, wearable electronics, and a biology/chemistry lab for new materials. She also teaches as adjunct professor at the Columbia University Dept. of Architecture. She studied Mechanical Engineering (Product Design) and Art History at Stanford University, and holds a PhD in Tangible Media from the MIT Media Lab. Her past work includes the development of exhibits at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and the Science Museum in London. She is an international speaker at TED and her design work has been awarded in forums including the ID Magazine Annual Design Review, the Prix Ars Electronica, and the D&AD Awards. She was named to the 2014 Business of Fashion 500 People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry and as one of Mass High Tech’s ‘Women to Watch’ in technology in 2008.

»Wearable technology is now the fastest growing area in the next generation of human-computer interfaces. So far, this new category of fashion technology built on established tenets of human‐centered design, resulting in wearable gadgets. But it can be explored in sensory modalities and fashion concepts going beyond such gadgets. New technologies and data structures allow our bodies to become enhanced, augmented, expanded in functionality and altered in form, while embedded textile technologies allow the devices we carry and the garments we wear to converge into a ’secondary skin’ which functions as an extension of ourselves to create a mobile personal environment. To blur the line between wearables and structures, this talk explores evolving issues in designing for the body, and through the language of fashion, how technological possibilities of extending human capabilities alters how and what we strive to design for ourselves.«

About »bauhausinteraction.colloquium«:
The Bauhausinteraction Colloquium is a new interdisciplinary colloquium series at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar which is to address issues between technology and arts+design and the humanities. This colloquium is organised by different disciplines at the Bauhaus-Universität, across media-informatics (applied computer sciences), media-design, media arts and product + interaction design.
The talks take place on Monday evenings. All talks are in english. In design, human–computer interaction, and software development, interaction design is »about shaping digital things for people’s use«, and alternately defined as the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services.

Beyond an interest in the mere form, interaction design has its main focus on human behavior and the interplay between human actions and technology. Coming from different disciplines in this colloquium we explore the central questions: Do we speak a common laguage? Are we ready for interdisciplinary dialogues and are we prepared for upcoming transdisciplinary challenges? Through a series of lectures and workshops on interaction design and related topics. A selection of internationally renowned speakers will give insights into their work, current developments and discussions. The colloquium provides a forum for exchange of ideas, impulses for inspiration and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Date:
Monday, 11 May 2015
7 p.m.

Location:
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Main Building, Oberlichtsaal
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 8
99423 Weimar

For further information please check: http://bauhausinteraction.org/colloquium/colloquium-speaker/