1 Humanistic HCI

The last twenty years has seen the growth of a humanistic approach to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) that has profoundly influenced theories and methodologies of design, user experience, and usability. This evolution has involved a merger of two seemingly disparate disciplinary methods, whose differences are largely based on relationships. The relationship of scientific theory, methods and data; in contrast to the humanities relation to researcher and theory, methods and data. The end goals of the disciplines have unique characteristics – where science sees theories, methods and data as distinct and validity is legitimated by fact and reproducibility of results by different researchers; a humanities approach attributes uniqueness to every situation as it is always considered in relation to context. A ‘text’ is a term used in humanities to encompass almost any human-made work for example: novels, paintings, sculptures, wearables, designed artefacts. There are theorists within humanities who attribute a mental resources model to knowledge and would argue that each act of reading or encountering a work is a unique experience, that can be understood differently in different contexts. This view contrasts with the scientific notion of replication. “The reason for the difference between the science’s objective research and the humanities’ expert subject has to do with the nature of the object of enquiry. Whereas science seeks to discover laws and patterns that are hidden from everyday observation, humanistic “theories concern what human beings already know and do” [1]. Science aims to eliminate subjectivity, whereas humanities cannot discount it. Bruce Mau views the formation of each memory as a new experience, a mental construction unique from its source, and in this way memory is a process with potential for growth [2], “experience transforms how we think and who we are” [3]. User experience is an area of HCI that has grown from the overlaying of alternative philosophies onto more traditional scientific approaches to HCI. For example, Thecla Schiphorst’s and Kristina Andersen’s performative wearables based on Richard Schusterman’s system of somaethetics [4] or Lian Loke’s wearables drawing on Eugene Gendlin’s focus-oriented psychotherapy [5] open new areas of enquiry. Critical approaches to HCI go beyond functionality and take aesthetics as a core value of design. The rise in interest is evident in Anderson and Pold’s writing urging designers to consider a scaffold to support interface criticism that attend to:

  • stylistic references;

  • standards and conformance to tradition;

  • materiality and remediation;

  • genre;

  • functional vs cultural dimensions of an interface;

  • representational techniques;

  • challengers to user expectations; and

  • capacity for unanticipated use [6].

2 Defining a Critical and Speculative Approach to Wearables

2.1 Science Fiction Prototyping/Futurecasting

The ongoing speed of change in the technological environments of human-computer interaction and design makes it appealing as a focus for ongoing study by the humanities. Artists and designers offer insight as they adopt new materials and tools and use creativity to speculate design futures. Bardzell uses the term Technological Imaginaries, “that is, our capacity to look beyond individual technologies, which come and go, and improve our capacity to imagine futures, and specifically futures that can be made possible through technologies and technological imagination” [7]. Tech industry giants like Intel use prototyping to test future scenarios before they invest time and energy in mass production. Brian David Johnson from Intel promulgates Science Fiction Prototyping, through Future Vision(ing) also known as Future Vision Video. His scenarios are based on a version of strategic forecasting he calls Futurecasting – a combination of trend analysis with technology development and ethnography [8]. Johnson uses techniques from the movie and gamming industries, techniques we also see appropriated in crowd funding strategies. A less commercial approach is taken by Joanna Berzowska who believes the pervasive clothing and electronics industries “exclusive focus on health monitoring and surveillance technologies clearly reflects the (military and pharmaceutical industries) funding structures and fail to deliver appealing product ideas that respond to personal, social, and cultural needs” [9]. A decade after she made this claim there has been much work developing “wearable technologies that challenge social structures and assumptions in relation to embodied interaction (or concepts of knowledge)” but much of this research is documented only by grey material and is still somewhat invisible to mainstream HCI. Although a canon of literature is emerging, “current wearable technology design practices [still] represent a reductionist view of human capacity” [10].

Flanagan is one of a small group of early innovators in critical speculative wearables. This group of artists and designers are apt at using video techniques as a way to capture and document interaction or performative actions that often may be context specific, for example reactive to environmental conditions or biodata. Video documentation is a logical way to disseminate research, a way to leverage a project’s reach when the fragility and instability of interactive prototypes may be difficult to transport. Future visioning adopt filmic and storytelling techniques and leverage social media platforms to engage far reaching audiences, and although not superior to first hand interaction with the pervasive apparel, negate other challenges of performative electronic artefacts such as freighting batteries or uncertified tech configurations, that often raise eyebrows and need negotiation to cross international borders and meet customs regulations. A sign that this grey material is merging into a canon of academic research in the field can be seen by the inclusion of an Interactivity Supplement focusing on the role of video as mediator of wearable concepts in the ACM SIGCHI 2013 conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems for Computer Human Interaction. The emergence of this session evidences the rise of techniques such as Future Visioning in design research that fall outside the commercial imperatives that form the focus of Johnsons approach – that of staying ahead of the market and predicting or designing future consumer needs and desires.

2.2 Designed Fiction

Designed fiction is another term that appears in academic literature – generally pertaining to science fiction and technological futures, it can be perceived as a subset of Future Vision Video. Anthony Dunne suggests Designed Fictions are rarely critical but tend to celebrate rather than question technology [11]. Designed fictions “are assemblages of various sorts, part story, part material, part idea-articulating prop, part functional software. []… A kind of object that has lots to say, but it is up to us to consider their meanings. []… Like artefacts from someplace else, telling stories about other worlds. []…Design fiction is about creative provocation, raising questions, innovation and exploration. … It is a way of probing, sketching and exploring ideas” [12].

2.3 Diagetic Prototypes

David Kirkby coined the term Diagetic Prototypes, as an extension of his earlier research on Performative Artefacts. Drawing from the use of the term diegesis in film. “Cinematic depictions of future technologies demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, viability and benevolence … The performative aspects of prototypes are especially evident in diegetic prototypes because a film’s narrative structure contextualizes technologies within the social sphere” [13]. A narrative is set up in which fictive prototypes appear to exist as everyday objects in the real world scenarios depicted. This is a speculative approach to design through methods of prototyping and storytelling as a means to design possible futures in the present that engage with the material ethics of new technologies (Figs. 1 and 2).

Fig. 1.
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HIF Cloud pop-up exhibition 2015, visitors at the opening function.

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Fig. 2.
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HIF Cloud pop-up exhibition 2015, Dr. Rafael Gomez congratulating the participating artists, designers and scientists.

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The following projects “Emotional” and “Instinct [In-stinkt]” were created in the HIF Cloud workshop 2015. They were developed working collaboratively across cultures, disciplines and international borders between undergraduate students from Australia and Hong Kong to prototype future wearablesFootnote 1 . Short video clips document production and use diagetic prototyping to convey narrative and human computer interaction. Two examples of prototypes created at HIF Cloud workshop are described by the artists/designers in the following statements:

“Emotional: Texting has become second nature to a generation that delights in connecting with each other through mobile devices. However, humans communicate on many levels simultaneously. In our technologically savvy world, people are finding it difficult to interpret the true meaning and emotional context of a text message deprived of the myriad of more-subtle signals given face-to-face. The aim of Emotional is to eliminate the interpersonal barriers that messages have created, in order to enrich communication through texting and other means of distant communication. The acrylic shoulder piece houses neo pixel (lights) and communicates emotion through a visual display of colour. The brass necklace houses vibration motors and communicates emotion according to different sequences of vibration. Studies have shown vibration is an effective silent method of communication that humans can train themselves to understand, as we learn to understand any language. … Emotional communicates the emotional state of the person at the time they write the text message to the wearer ensuring the wearer can interpret the message accurately. Emotional uses Bluetooth technology to connect the garment to the user’s phone. When a message is received, a signal is sent to the garment, which then reacts using varying degrees of vibration and light according to the sender’s emotion. The person sending a text message will also wear the device as it has the ability to read emotion through a sensor” [14] (Fig. 3).Footnote 2

Fig. 3.
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Emotional 2015, Steve Buhagiar, Anna Kalma, Lauren Richardson, Liv Tsim, Ryan Ustinoff and Kosa Law Wing Yi. Materials: Laser cut acrylic, brass, neopixles, Arduino and vibration motors.

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“Instinct [in-stinkt] is an illustrative sensory concept designed to amplify emotional experience, transcending boundaries and connecting people in new ways. Instinct [in-stinkt] acts as an emotional translator for vision, hearing and socially impaired users. To enable this, the user wears a discrete camera and microphone sensor that acts as their eyes and ears by deploying expression and voice inflection recognition sensors. The two actuators (mechanisms that convert energy into motion) were created in two separate countries and instinctually facilitate technologically improved emotional connection. The … actuator exhibits emotion - these are expressed via the headpiece - creating an interesting platform for discussion. The various shapes of the headpiece individually moving up and down in relation to the areas of the brain that specific emotion stimulates, creating a dramatic show of emotion that is not often acknowledged. The geometric shapes symbolize the organic shapes of the brain as a visual emotional structure. The actuator notifies the user by enriching and enhancing the emotional connection. The actuator sends tingles up their spine via the enclosed 3D printed actuator. Through natural instinct, the user will be conditioned to interpret the positive or negative feelings that have been projected. Neopixels simultaneously light up under the surface of the 3D printed component (placed along the spine) in a visual display to stimulate the other senses. Instinct [In-stinkt] is a product that stimulates an emotional response, an aspect of the human experience sometimes taken for granted” [15] (Fig. 4).Footnote 3

Fig. 4.
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Instinct In-Stinkt 2015, David Chapman, Stella Franks, Holy Hutson, Chan Hong Wing and SiuYing Lam. Mixed media – cloth, servo motors, camera and microphone sensors, vibration motors, LEDs, 3D printed ABS plastic housing, Rasberry Pi and Arduino microprocessors.

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2.4 Futurology

The futurist Stuart Candy [16] describes what he calls the ‘cone of possibility space’, which is a useful model for our purposes to illustrate the space of critical and speculative design. The model maps possible, probable, and preferable futures as subsets of possibility space. Candy developed this model from Norman Henchey’s (1987) description published in Making Sense of Future Studies. Bezold and Hancock define the 4 P’s of Henchey’s model as: 1. “Possible, i.e. what might happen; 2. Plausible, i.e. what could happen; 3. Probable, i.e. what will likely happen; and 4. Preferable, i.e. what we want to have happen” [17]. The visual map depicts today as the starting point of the future, the closer to this point the more similar futures appear. The further away from the starting point the harder it is to predict as futures diverge, but clearly the choices made today or in the near future can have dramatic impact over time [18]. The tip of the cone starts at the present and as the cone radiates out it represents distance into the future. The cone is filled with the space of what is possible, a smaller cone in the center represents what is probable. Mainstream design usually takes place in the bounds of the probable, but critical and speculative work takes place in another conical section. In Candy’s model it intersects the probable and breaks outside its border. Voros offers another version of the model [19] in which the space of preferable future is mapped to slightly overlap probable, encompass plausible, and reach across into possible futures [20].

2.5 Critical Design

Anthony Dunne adopts Candy’s model with the addition of Hencheys ‘plausible’ to define the space of critical design. Critical design works by engaging people, and to do this successfully it must stay partially within the realm of the plausible so that a dialogue with reality can take place. In Dunne’s 5 ‘P’ diagram Present (now), Probable Futures, Plausible Futures, Possible Futures and Preferable Futures, the space of preferable takes a trajectory from the present across probable and plausible. However, what lies outside the space of the plausible is science fiction, it is fantasy, or magic, beyond what we understand as the laws of science. In Dunne’s opinion a design that posits anything is possible, lacks the credentials for critical contemplation or dialogue that Dunne’s products seek to engage. Dunne’s projects look like products, familiar but strange, their ambiguity is a strategic attempt to engage thought. Within the space of the plausible are a range of alternative future scenarios that seem to make sense based on our knowledge of the present.

Probable futures can also be described as Descriptive Forecasting, usually based on a continuation of the present and short term trend developments. A reliance on probable futures leaves us unprepared for wildcard events. Preferable futures offer alternative visions that may be very different to what presently exists, also known as Normative Forecasting or Prescriptive Futurism (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.
figure 5

Source: adapted from diagrams by Henchy (1978), Berzold (1993), Voros [19], Dunne [23], Candy [16]

Modelling futures.

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The important point made by Candy, Dunne and Raby, Kirkby and in line with the authors view is that critical and speculative design are kinds of discursive interventions.

Susan-Elizabeth Ryan proposes that Speculative wearables are a subset of wearables that have grown out of academic institutions, due to their lack of engagement with the demands of consumer culture. They have trouble sustaining themselves in a commercial sense but are rather the physical articulation of experimental research ideas [21]. This is a new kind of ‘cognitive speculation’ [22] to borrow a term from literary theory, or we could borrow Rich Gold’s term Evocative Knowledge Objects to describe an object which is designed to provoke conversations. Works such as those illustrated above can be seen as elaborate Cultural Probes, this is a term that views artefacts like litmus paper, they are put into a situation as catalysts to provoke responses and gauge conditions. In Dunne’s view the ‘use’ of an object generates narrative spaces where users understanding or experience is changed or enlarged. This is a space between desire and determinism, a world he describes as the “infra-ordinary” [23].

2.6 Critical Making

Critical Making is a term used by Matt Ratto to describe forms of material-conceptual critique as an expansion of information systems, and science and technology studies (STS) that he feels have emerged due to increased engagement between design research and social studies. This approach has gained momentum driven by civic engagement in do-it-yourself movements, open source technologies, community commons licensing, hacker communities and events such as “maker” fairs. Ratto posits an alternative mode to the dominant deconstructive method to knowledge acquisition replaced by the notion of assemblage. Deconstructive modes that “reduce all of science and technology to semiotics seem to lack the power to provide substantive critique” [24].

2.7 Speculative Design

Speculative design is a term promulgated largely by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby in their book “Speculative everything” (2013). In the forward to Dunne’s earlier publication “Herzian Tales,” Crampton Smith draws parallels between fine-arts methodologies of – provocation, making ambitious, making strange – imported into product designer’s vocabulary as “a speculative arena to imagine possible and impossible futures” [25]. Dunne reiterates that sentiment stating that speculative design portrays fictions that are “glitchy, strange, disruptive, and hint at other places, times and values” [11]. The relationship between creativity and critical thinking was a key question that Flanagan posed as the theme of the International Conference on Research Creativity – Praxis 2012. Across the presentations a common creative tactic evident, although different speakers identified it by different names, involved creating a sense of estrangement, a dislocation, a reframing of perspective. In 2013 in a talk at the MCA as part of Sydney Vivid festival Flanagan articulated this in terms of embracing mutation. Creativity, inclusive of its experiments and failures is, in fact, something that is key to our evolution. Critical to maintaining art and designs relevance to the world it inhabits. All the terminology used to describe these practices clearly overlap a great deal, their difference often is rooted in their epistemology from different disciplines or cultural origins or the emphasis that the choice of literary term alludes. For example, ‘critical’ connotes a negative investigatory perspective, ‘fiction’ takes away any connection to reality. Speculative Design draws parallels with the continental philosophers of Speculative realism. The influence of Quentin Meillassoux [26] led to contemporary notions of object-oriented ontology [27] and intra-action as proposed by Karen Barad [28]. While this paper does not have the space to go into philosophy in any depth, (for more detail read Flanagan 2016 [52]) this is odd to not run in order, “Visceral design: Sites of Intra-action at the Interstices of waves and particles”) these ideas underline an interest in breaking down traditional cognitive borders between human and non-human entities, bodies and things.

2.8 Displacement, Estrangement and Cognitive Dissonance

The hardware of computers and the soft materials of textiles are combining. Undermining the “cold hard metal of digital technology” Ebru Kurbak and Irene Posch of Stitching Worlds explore textiles technologies as a means to create electronic and high-tech objects from textiles. For example, they created a knitted sweater that appears ordinary, but with the addition of a battery becomes a transistor radio. “Wool, insulated copper wires and silk yarn spun with stainless steel can be used to knit resistors, capacitors and coils necessary to form a simple FM radio transmitter (http://www.translocal.jp/radio/micro/howtosimplestTX.html)” [29]. Maggie Otto’s Earbeds are soft felt headphones designed for comfort to wear while relaxing and falling asleep. Earbeds feature couching with coils of stainless steel conductive thread. The only hard component is a flat round neodymium magnet. Although neither of these projects represents technical innovation, they exemplify a disruption in our assumptions about how such devises should look. This slippage between our expectation of an object’s aesthetic and functional properties, is a kind of creative mutation that can be encountered as cognitive dissonance. Evelyn Fox Keller highlights the underlying controversy in this proposition, “namely that concerning the relationship between form and matter, where form is generally construed as active and matter as passive” [30]. By acknowledging the material properties of both the physical and ephemeral Kurbak, Posh and Otto attribute agency to what was formally considered dormant matter (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6.
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Maggie Otto, Earbeds 2016

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3 A Materials Approach

The industrial revolution spawned the machine age. The materials of this generation were iron and then steel, the proliferation of the latter, increased in viability through the innovation of the Bessemer steel-making process and steam engines. The increase in quality and decrease in cost was rapid, dropping from 170 US dollars per ton in 1867 to 15 US dollars by 1900 [31]. The second machine age was electronic, its expediential growth was due to the innovation of the transistor and its miniaturization to microchip, increased capacity and lowering price attributed the material of this generation – silicone. Graphene may hold the secrets of the next wave of innovation. Nano-chips with further miniaturization, increased capacity and lower price extend Moore’s law beyond what we believed was possible. At nano-scales, mechanics change, quantum physics come into play and material properties undergo state changes as they are reconfigured. The only truly sustainable systems are natural ones and we are rapidly advancing our understanding of them. Innovation by integration with natural systems and the life sciences is moving beyond biomimicry, design with biology will integrate mechanics, electronics and chemistry to bio-design our future. The architecture of these systems is at the level of DNA, the sequencing and synthesizing of base pairs are becoming more financially viable following the Carlson Curve [32]. The tools of the industrial age were like mechanical extensions of our musculature. “Electronic machines can extend our minds, our subjective relationship with the world, our active relationship with other people” [33]. The machines of the future will extend the biology of our bodies and redefine our perception of our bodies and the world. But as Crampton Smith reminds us “Objects of use, in short, seldom have solely practical significance, but also carry ritual and symbolic meaning” [33]. This is more than evident in our long cultural history’s intertwinement with clothing and bodily adornment, it is these artefacts integration with technologies which are the focus of wearables in this paper.

Art and design converge with material, biological and computer science, to design future wearable artefacts. In Sydney Australia, students of Dr. Flanagan and Dr. Knothe-Tate at the University of New South Wales created prototypes inspired by biomimicry. Collaboration at the intersection of courses in Smart Textiles and New Technologies and Mechanical Properties of Bio Materials produced creative results presented in a public exhibition as part of Sydney’s Spark festival. For example, Nicholas Bentley’s Zero Waste Regenerative Textiles proposes a fibrous compound that can be woven into textiles that will mimic natural regenerative processes of lizards, worms and starfish effectively healing rips or tears. In nature, incurring a wound triggers an influx of chemicals below the surface of the wound to form a fresh ‘epidermis’. Bentley explains that “mature muscle and tissue cells revert to their immature state rendering them ‘indifferent’. These indifferent cells are then programmed by ‘macrophage cells’ (similar to stem cells in utero) dividing into muscle tissue, skin, spinal cord and cartilage cells, although these cells are brand new they have an exact memory of the limb that was lost, allowing them to seamlessly regenerate an exact copy” [34]. Jasper Moy prototyped a synthetic fur that is antimicrobial, fire resistant, impact resistant and stain and water resistant made from aramid Kevlar fibers and Nomex yarns that he called Furture [35]. Tobie Kerridge and Nikki Stott are jewellery designers who collaborated with the bioengineer Ian Thompson to create a new breed of wedding ring [36]. They harvested the dental tissue of engaged couples, and grew it over a scaffold to create bone tissue rings that were effectively an amalgam of the couple’s DNA. Similarly designer Sofie Boons collaborated with scientist Jodie Melbourne in the creation of nanoparticle infused, scented jewellery [36].

3.1 Nano Scale - Beyond the Visible

Advances in technology have enabled faster speeds, greater capacity and smaller scale to a point where technology is wearable. Moore’s Law of computing where technology doubles in capacity and halves in scale every year, has gone beyond what was believed to be physically possible, beyond the point at which silicone, cut so small and packed so close, that it loses the functional property of conducting electrons and rather they begin to jump across them – a problem known as tunneling. Silicone coats naturally with oxide, a natural occurrence that grows on the silicone surface and acts as an insulator to create a conductive pathway. The oxide layer has enabled vertical scaling by stacking layers of silicone, it is possible to stack layers of silicone vertically in columns, extending the capacity and extending the validity of Moore’s Law. To make the stacking as thin as possible that material science and nano-technology has opened-up the next generation of speed and scale by creating micron thick layers of material that are used as insulator sheets on top of thin layers of silicone. Vertical transistors known as Nano wires and Nano meter films are created through Atomic Layer Deposition with materials such as hafniem oxide. A new paradigm is evident by changing the architecture of the transistor completely. It appears that graphene can enable electrons to travel 1000 times faster than silicone. Sheets of Graphene, one atom thick, rolled into carbon nanotubes, use almost no energy and remain cool. Depending on the direction that the tubes are roles they can have different properties, from a conductor to a metal. The architecture of computers themselves are set to be re-envisioned, to embrace the variability, and harness the properties of materials at the nano scale. Electrons behave in new ways in the field above a micron thick layer of graphene, electrons skim across the surface with almost no friction. This property indicates that some of the thermal limitations of silicon can be overcome with graphene. The new properties of the nano environment involve quantum mechanics that, will be harnessed to design and evolve computing electronics into machines beyond our current imagination (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7.
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Jasper Moy: Furture 2015

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K. Eric Drexler’s 1986 book Engines of Creation [37] enthusiastically paints a picture of Nano-systems of molecular machines, gears, pulleys, conveyor belts conjuring mechanical metaphors that are common in our descriptions of the body. R.D. Astumian’s 2001 book Making Molecules into Motors [38] includes description of a molecular forklift and a ratchet and pawl created from triptycene and helicene. Drexler’s speculative designs imagine nanoassemblers, teams of nanobot construction crews, in order to mass produce his machines [39]. This work has influenced future design of microbots which are largely still experimental or being tested. As we gain greater understanding of the Nano-world the implications appear boundless. For example, Flagelbots were inspired by biomimicry, they were an early generation nanobot, approximately thirty microns long, designed with a corkscrew mechanism to propel themselves along like naturally occurring e-coli bacterium which has a rotating cork screw tail. The difficulty of mobility in the human body is the viscosity of the environment so although Flagelabots swam well in water their application in the body was a challenge. One way to overcome issues of mobility associated with environments at a nanoscale is by using “swarms of swimming bacteria to serve as drug mules” [40]. Brad Nelson from ETH Zurich discovered a way to propel nanobots with ultrasonic waves and steer them magnetically [41]. The Eyebot fits into the needle of a syringe and carries a small dose of medicine. It is being used in eye surgery where it is navigated along blood vessels to deliver its payload. The nanobot is created from a magnetic material and receives direction from an array of powerful electro magnets that surround the patients head. Magnetic microbots are being developed to target cancer cells [42]. Microbots already in production include the Robo bee – a three centimeter bot that flies like a bee; Festo Ant that has jaws to grip and move things around; Water Striderbot that walks on water and jumps; Micro Tugbots that drag things around much larger than themselves; SRI Bots; Origami bots that self-assemble; Starfishbots that can be smaller than 1 mm and are used for biopsies; Micro Scallop Bots that can move through fluids like clams; Micro Motor Bots that are self-propelled nanobots; Pillcam is a one inch capsule that passes through the body in approximately eight hours. It can be swallowed and takes 360° pictures inside as it travels around the body. Pictures are sent wirelessly to a wearable computer.

Fabrics of nanofibers and buckytubes are very strong. Buckytube fibers are about 150 times stronger than silk. That implies that a nanosuit made of this material could be so fine, just five microns thick, that it would weigh as little as two teaspoons full of water. Like a layer of skin covering the body a nanosuit would be completely reconfigurable. Over a decade ago Hall described the vision for this material, constructed from two or more layers of scales, that could slide past one another. Each scale hollow and filled with a vacuum, and reflective to deflect transfer of heat through radiation. The system he proposed operates as a Nano-scale reversible heat pump, pumping heat away from the body if it is too hot and if it is too cold acting as heat engines harnessing energy from heat flow from your body to outside. Hall’s hypothesis includes Nano-suits configured to provide oxygen as in a molecular sieve oxygen concentrator enabling human habitation in extreme environments such as mountaintops or under the ocean [43].

3.2 Boundary Objects

What is the effect of future wearables on the self? If we imagine the city as a body, within this ecosystem our individual bodies are like floating wetland islands. We know that our bodies harbor vast ecologies of micro-organisms. It is estimated that foreign microbial cells outnumber human cells by a ratio of ten to one. This is a symbiotic relationship essential to our survival and key to our digestion and which helps us to resist infection. We conceptualize the body as an autonomous organism separated from the external world by a defined boundary, yet, in reality no biological integument exists that divides the interior from the exterior. “Biology recognized many bodies, corresponding to many skins: in higher organisms, there is the multicellular organism contained within an outer integument; in all organisms, cellular bodies are contained by nuclear membranes” [44].

Neri Oxman has been designing wearables at the intersection of materials science, synthetic biology and computer aided additive manufacturing processes. Her projects take direction in relation to the properties of the various media she is working with, in combination with templates developed around digital or physical growth. Her designs are inspired by morphological, biochemical and biological as well as synthetic-biological systems. Her methodology involves “technical challenges of templating bits, genes and atoms to inform design with biological principles on the one hand, and augment{ation of} these designs with biological functionality on the other” [45] ({…} inserted by Flanagan).

Zbigniew Oksiuta believes growing the biological materials for the products we make must be an integral part of the design process. Rather he proposes a future which will “one day allow us to create objects, machines or architectural structures not only from dead materials such as metal, concrete or plastic, but also through growing them in biological ways. Soon we will be able to create a new ‘replicator’ that will open the way for a new evolution – a hybrid between nature and culture occurring at speeds previously unheard of” [46].

An expanding definition of wearable artifacts includes wearables transplanted deep inside the body, circulated in our blood stream, beneath or on the surface of the skin, worn as body coverings, peripherally active in data clouds, locally active around the body, and distributed through the world wide web. Design thinking takes place across these fields integrally with that of their surfaces. Just as “the skin (the surface of the body) and the brain (the surface of the nervous system) derive from the same embryonic structure, the ecoderm” [47], wearable haptic interfaces are intra-related, dissolving the traditional corporeal borders of inside and outside the body. Extending this line of thinking further, augmented and virtual realities immerse our bodies in imaginary spaces. Pervasive apparel extends our senses and perception beyond the current limitations of our understanding of physics and human scale. The expanded notion of materiality in the creation of the wearables described above, lend to this approach, and so does the collaborative nature of the work typically involved in the creation of wearables – in the multiple stakeholders that engage with the artifact, the designer, the engineer, the scientist, the wearer and the viewer etc., – this leads to a definition of wearables as inhabiting a kind of translational space, where the art of good design is to “craft objects containing elements which are different in different worlds” - objects that hover on the periphery, “marginal to those worlds” [48], they are, to borrow a term from Susan Leigh Star, ‘boundary objects’ [49].

Wearables viewed as boundary objects are in some ways analogous to the skin itself. Didier Anzieu describes skin-ego as a state of progressive permeability. The notion of wearables as ‘boundary objects’ draws on the idea of skin-ego as one of permeable layers wrapping our sense of corporeality. A historical precedence can be found in the wet-wrapping techniques used in the treatment of psychotics in nineteenth century French psychiatry. The treatment involved wrapping patients in cold wet cloth and them warming them, whilst also keeping them physically surrounded by medical staff. Another precedence can be seen in the therapeutic burial rituals found in African culture or the practice of emersion in ice-baths by Tibetan Monks. Anzieu posits that “the Skin-ego has a dual anaclisis– a biological one based on the surface of the body and a social one based on the support of a united group of people attentive to what the person is going through at that moment” [50].

Beyond enhancing functionality, what is the experience of a foreign object in the body? In medical organ transplants the focus has naturally been on survival of the patient, but now that many transplants are viewed as routine operations, research into the psychological experience of transplants can help improve quality of life and indicate potential issues surrounding future wearables as they enter the body. From the dialysis ward Flanagan observed patients who depended on machines for daily survival. Mandy (Bebe) Taylor (1969–2003) was one such patient who spent a large portion of her later life seated in an armchair, one arm rendered useless connected by tubes to a dialysis machine filtering her blood. A transplant appeared to offer her freedom for a new life, but the psychological trauma proved otherwise. Anti-rejection drugs changed her hormones dramatically, her face changed shape, she grew facial hair, her smell was different, in fact she described the experience of not being able to recognize herself in the mirror. The dislocation was so severe that she stopped taking her medication and the kidney went into rejection. Whereas most people would affiliate their bodies with nature, left to nature Mandy faced death, her relationship to the machine was complete dependence. The natural world, away from a hospital was a dangerous world that was uninhabitable for her for any length of time. Para-olympian and model Amy Mulins’ reflections on human machine relationships, was heavily tainted by the third party viewer. Born with fibular hemimelia, both her lower legs were amputated at the age of one. As a child she was teased for her disability, but as she grew older the younger generation, who had been raised on ‘Transformers’ and ‘Manga’ culture had a different perspective. Rather than a disability Amy Mulins now was viewed as having enhanced capabilities, not unlike super powers. Evelyn Fox Keller highlights the underlying controversy in this proposition, “namely that concerning the relationship between form and matter. Where form is generally construed as active and matter as passive” [51].

Our evolution has always been one of techno geneses, and this continues today as we design systems, artefacts, implantables and wearables, that integrate seamlessly with the body, where DNA itself becomes one of the designer’s materials, new realms of possibility open at the Nano-scale. Designing wearables call for a renewed interest in materiality and the creation of tangible social artefacts where membranes between media are conceived as active rather than passive. Rather than separating inside from outside, membranes are permeable and constantly negotiated. In this way dialogical praxis extends to be inclusive of all entities: human to human, human to non-human, non-human to human, non-human to non-human as well as dissolving these binary notions to be inclusive of entities that are in varying degrees cyborganic.