Keywords

1 Introduction

This paper investigates how laboratory performativity and epistemic cultures of technology and research influence and seed the design outcomes of techno-fashion and wearables. The sites investigated reflect how the complex intersection of materials, technologies and situated practices of research influence and shape techno-fashion development. This paper seeks to argue that the events produced within the context of the wearables atelier/laboratory are aligned with the notion of “performativity” as explored in other disciplines such as performance, theatre, sociology more specifically Science Technology and Society (STS). STS theories argue that fundamental scientific research is developed on the basis on performative amalgams of machines and humans [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The usefulness of STS literature is in examining scientific research occurring within laboratory contexts within a frame that encompasses the myriad elements at play in a lab from: people, machines, the weather, methodologies, modes of inscription and the passing of time. For this reason STS describes events taking place in the laboratory—such as material testing, prototype development, fabrication of new materials, note taking and technology testing—as “performative.” I believe it is useful to bring this type of large scope analysis to the production analysis of wearables because of its complex nature. Wearables bring together a multitude of expertise along with many use outcomes that include the human body, fashion, technology, and public perceptions. The nature of my desire to use “performative” as a lens through which to better understand wearables is because it permits a leveling of influences, where human and non-human contributions can be compared and valued with equally stakes and impacts.

2 Epistemic Cultures of Wearables Laboratories

STS theories of performativity owe much to mid-twentieth century sociological and anthropological theories of performance, which directed research towards performance as a mode of analysis and a methodology for understanding various social and organizational structures [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]. However, today’s STS theories on performativity—expanding into the unheralded territory of combining scientific, material and social research—question the core assumption that material research is objective, consistent or even reproducible. Instead, STS theories of performativity argue for a nuanced, unique and situated (location-based) analysis of laboratory cultures that includes the many converging actants (machines, material, practices, tools, people etc.) participating in research on a “performative” scale. STS theories of performativity applied to wearables sites of production—such as university laboratories; media arts centers; design studios; and DIY ateliers—offer unique ways of understanding this emergent form of techno-artistic research from within.

An STS/performative lens gives due consideration to the many complex narratives, dynamic agendas and focuses at play in the wearables laboratory ranging from: the material, social, technological and economic. In my opinion an STS model sheds important light onto numerous intersecting events taking place during the course of developing a prototype and design for wearables. This focus is scalable from the material manipulation and knowhow of the specific laboratory; to the community and audience around the building of objects from researchers, curators to consumers; the access and expertise around new technologies from the digital to the analogue; and finally the economic structures built around these testing and production sites that range from private to public sector.

It is my argument and belief that without a framework to compare the specific range of events that unfold in these unique (and often hybrid) laboratories engaged in wearables and fashion-tech innovation, it is difficult to compare, understand or even critique current wearables innovations. For obvious reasons, not all designs studios are structured around the same material resources, goals, technological leverages, or economic structures. While some laboratories focus on fundamental research intended for wearable technologies that have yet to be invented; other ateliers engage in the iteration process of creating an irresistible consumer product based on existing components and production practices; while other labs are principally concerned with putting on a good show for their arts audience; and finally an open-design community will be focused on sharing knowhow and making the process as transparent as possible. Because wearables are being innovated in varied contexts from university laboratories to media arts organizations, product design studios or small DIY communities, it is important to speak about what happens behind the scenes of production before comparing the results.

STS theories of performativity are engaged in looking at the events unfolding in the laboratory wherein weighted consideration is given to the human and non-human contributors within the developmental process of researching, testing, designing and iterating to a final wearables invention. I believe that this exciting post-humanist perspective wherein machines and materials drive and shape human behaviors as much as humans shape machine and material outcomes opens up to a series of possibilities for considering the co-creation of wearables from a wider scope than ever attempted. Herein I propose to take the time to look at the unique practices of four wearables design laboratories with a lens to value and consider four specific contributing factors: the material, the social, the technological and the economic.

3 Wearables: Four Case Studies

The four specific case studies pertaining to wearable technology ateliers/laboratories that I have chosen to expand on and explain through the lens of STS theories of performativity feature: Joanna Berzowska’s XS Labs at Hexagram Institute of Concordia University, Montréal, Canada; Anouk Wipprecht’s works executed at V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Diffus Design’s Copenhagen techno atelier; and finally my own DIY production platform, 3lectromode, situated at the intersection of fashion, art, and technology.

3.1 XS Labs

The first case study explores XS Labs, situated within the Milieux Institute (formerly Hexagram Institute) at Concordia University and directed by Joanna Berzowska, associate professor of design and computation arts. Joanna and I have been colleagues in the same department for over a decade, and by virtue of intersecting interests, I have had the privilege of witnessing the evolution of her studio, and even curating some of its works in international exhibitions, such as Sartorial Flux (A+D Gallery, Columbia College, Chicago, 2006) and Electromode (2010 Vancouver Olympics). With XS Labs nearby in the same institution where I teach, I have benefited from its proximity by intersecting with and learning from the research conducted in its laboratory, and in sharing resources and information. Furthermore, being embedded at Concordia, XS Labs has provided a research focus on wearables engineering and crafting, thus attracting researchers and collaborators both locally and internationally, to the benefit of the local academic milieux, as well as the wider professional wearables community.

Background.

Berzowska’s background combines degrees in design and mathematics in an era before computation arts, interaction design, or digital-arts education. As an academic researcher, her lab is focused on innovation, knowledge building, education, publishing, and lecturing in the field of e-textiles, new materials for wearables, and interaction design. Important research grants from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Société et culture (FRQSC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) have guided the lab’s focus toward a combination of fundamental research, design concerns, and the training of what Berzowska calls “highly qualified people” (HQP). XS Labs seeks to innovate in design via new technologies, while responding to such designs’ impact and poetic resonance on the body’s actions. In this way, how interactive garments script the body is a central question for the lab. Having studied at MIT’s Tangible Media Lab, the founding institution for wearables technologies, Berzowska is well versed in the challenges and aims of creating meaningful design that can inspire both industry and art.

Laboratory Culture.

XS Labs, a design research studio founded in 2002, focuses on innovating in electronic textiles and responsive garments. Says Berzowska, “A core component involves the development of enabling methods, materials, and technologies—in the form of soft electronic circuits and composite fibres—as well as the exploration of the expressive potential of soft reactive structures” [15]. XS Labs works at the intersection of two communities: researchers and students. In this way, the laboratory’s epistemic culture combines material and design innovation via the continuing education of her student researchers. Berzowska describes her lab as a playful and experimental space where students are encouraged to try new ideas and materials, thus creating a collaborative, collegial approach to research-creation.

Technology.

Core research at XS Labs is focused around the creation of design platforms for emergent technologies. The studio approaches new technologies with a concern and sensibility to make design “softer,” and hence more wearable. Motivated by the lack of e-textiles and poor wearability in traditional HCI applications, XS Labs has cultivated a palette of techniques and materials better suited to embodied and worn-interaction platforms. Berzowska explains that XS Labs is:

particularly concerned with the exploration of interactive forms that emphasize the natural expressive qualities of transitive materials. We focus on the aesthetics of interaction, which compels us to interrogate and to re-contextualize the materials themselves. The interaction narratives function as entry points to question some of the fundamental assumptions we make about the technologies and the materials that drive our designs [16].

From a technical standpoint, the studio works with materials including conductive fibers, reactive inks, photoelectrics, shape-memory alloys, conductive inks, LEDs, thermochromic inks, motors, and more. While cutting-edge material inventions propel the studio’s designs forward, the cultural history of textile fabrication processes (weaving, stitching, embroidery, knitting, beading, quilting) also inform how this innovation will take shape. These experiments allow the construction of “complex textile-based surfaces, substrates, and structures with transitive properties” [16]. Examples of this high-tech craft approach include the Karma Chameleon research project, carried out in collaboration with Dr. Maksim Skorobogatiy, Canada Research Chair in Photonics at the École Polytechnique de Montréal, which involved a mixture of nanotechnology and traditional weaving.

Body/Interaction.

XS Labs’ designs reconsider how interaction through soft and textile networks can foster novel, and at times ludic or even dark-humored forms of physical and body-based interaction. As Berzowska notes, new materialities “promise to shape new design forms and new experiences that will redefine our relationship with colour, texture, silhouette, materiality, and with digital technology in general” [17]. This body-material-focused design approach has influenced many of the studio’s early designs, like the Memory Rich Clothing series, featuring dresses that invited strangers to touch the wearer in order to activate the material transformation of thermochromic inks (Spotty Dress, 2004); or garments that beckoned you to whisper into them so as to activate a series of lights and thus tangibly display the act of intimacy (Intimate Memory Shirt & Skirt, 2003). In this way, the technology arrives at its logical (or illogical, in the case of self-described absurdist or transgressive projects) placement and interaction, focused on creating meaning as opposed to efficiency, productivity, or other more mainstream Wearable Tech strategies.

This visceral and whimsical approach to designing new modes of interaction with emergent materialities is succinctly illustrated in the Captain Electric and Battery Boy (CEBB) research project (2007–2010). Initiated on the occasion of a class titled “Second Skin and Softwear,” which Berzowska taught at Concordia in the winter of 2008, the project took off with a student brief to create “Human Powered Illumination.” The results propelled further investigations (and a 2008 summer workshop) into haptic platforms for power generation and storage via wearables. Exploring the potential for garments to harness the body for electricity, the project produced three designs, which playfully highlight our co-dependent relationship with electricity. Inspired by conceptual frameworks of co-dependence, parasitic systems, or even extreme power relations between users and their need for or use of electricity, the designs stage a series of physical interactions that both amplify and visualize this exchange, or power dynamic.

The results of CEBB showcase erratic, intransigent garments that provoke the user to pull, scratch, and wrestle comically with its materiality, in the aim of generating future available wattage. Fittingly named Itchy, Sticky, and Stiff, the garments stage body-generated energy systems, capitalizing on various strategic, gestural platforms of activation. Building on intuitive actions, such as pulling, pushing, and rubbing, the garments activate both the collection of energy, as well as its visualization through a variable output (sound or light). For example, Itchy invites the wearer (or others) to rub the concentric circles of its wool collar, thus creating static energy that powers a series of LEDs. Stiff, meanwhile, projects a parasitically passive platform for energy creation that necessitates the participation of an external player, who must push its attractive little back hump in order to activate a recoding only available to the wearable’s wearer. Alternately, like a cat trying to scratch its own back, the wearer can also seek to collide with objects so as to activate the awkwardly placed bump. Finally, Sticky features a waist-activated lever system that both restricts and benefits from the wearer’s natural arm/hand actions to feed its need for energy. Admittedly, these are at once awkward and provocatively thoughtful systems that force us to consider the human-energy relationship in a new light, as well as the concept of “natural” forms of wearable interaction scenarios.

These three CEBB wearables force the wearer to “work” in order to have access to energy. Each fashion-tech garment forces the wearer to negotiate not only awkward or uncomfortable textiles and sartorial shapes, but also to engage in unnatural movements in order to create electricity friction. In the case of Itchy, the wearer must rub the collars together, or invite others to do so in a way that is “normal,” or socially condoned. We all know that static is the enemy of good fashion; yet here, fashion invites the creation of static friction through robust movement. In the case of Stiff, the garment is literally stiff—the antithesis of textile garment comfort. The hump-like protrusion embedded into the garment is not only anti-fashion in shape, but also rather inaccessible, as an interactive platform for the wearer. In this way, the garment becomes a parasitic system, in search of participants to activate it, or proposing unconventional ways of interacting with the environment, such as repeatedly bumping into walls or other objects in order to charge it. The final design, Sticky, is a bully system that requires the wearer to pull the device in order to be charged. However, the device also influences normative movements such as picking things up, because any movement using the hands must interact with the pulley. In this way, any movement of the hand has no choice but to participate in the kinetic ecosystem of energy gathering, whether the wearer wishes to do so or not. An inverse way of looking at the interaction is to think of the wearables as hosts who make use of the body to power themselves, thus inverting the power dynamic of wearable and wearer.

Furthermore, such projects exacerbate the limits of “smart” design by highlighting both the very real, as well as absurdist nature of our present-day technological demands. This work highlights current concerns over energy, environment, and climate issues, which are at once distant and day-to-day concerns. Perhaps it could even be argued that, as transitional objects of an absurdist nature, CEBB designs demonstrate a “liminoid” quality, as they neither fully adhere to the expectations of an HCI system, nor are they purely art. Not quite functional, and not quite purely playful, the CEBB designs reside at the limit of what we might expect or be willing to engage in when using a wearable. Berzowska reminds us that we “need wearable computing that is irrational, poetic, musical, and theatrical. We need wearable computing that stimulates magical and literary experiences in our everyday life rather than just trying to improve productivity or our efficiency” [1. In this way, XS Labs’ designs question the form and meaning of the wearable through their choreography of distinctly “off” interactions.

3.2 V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media

The next case study begins in 2011 at V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, where I met Anouk Wipprecht, fashion-tech designer-in-residence at the time. While at V2_ for a three-month PhD residency stay, I participated in the E-Textile Workspace research cluster, which conducted monthly meetings on the themes of craft, DIY, and wearables. I also organized a Test_Lab event (single-evening events dedicated to showcasing new works) entitled “Clothing without Cloth,” which featured members of the European wearables community (Italy, Holland, England, France) involved in active material experimentation that pushes the limits of “clothing” and textiles.Footnote 1 Since this research stay, Wipprecht and I worked on organizing the TechnoSensual exhibition, which took place at the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna (2013), and for which I curated the symposium. We have also sat on panels together, including a recent one on “Embracing Fashion + Technology” at the Atelier Néerlandais in Paris (2016), and we have collaborated on an upcoming fashion-tech festival to be held in Montreal in 2017.

Background.

Wipprecht, trained as a fashion designer and later in engineering for design, is one of the few mavericks in the field of wearables to straddle skill sets in aesthetics and engineering with equal virtuosity. With the mindset of an inventor and the ambition of a fashion star, she has built an impressive collection of works, collaborators, and followers, influencing the field of fashion tech. Capitalizing on the growing maker movement, multimedia entertainment events, and opportunities for fashion tech to tell its story and be at center-stage, she has developed a style that combines robotics and techno-aesthetics. As a researcher, she is keenly invested in wearables’ interactive and inter-relational dimensions, and in the potential for wearables to offer the body new capacities for expression that traditional fashion cannot. In short, Wipprecht has crafted a fine creative balance, in which her designs—combining fashion, technology, and the body—permit us to visualize, experience, and dream how we may wish to perform with the fashion tech of the future.

Laboratory Culture.

To begin with the laboratory, or studio context in which Wipprecht works, one should first mention her nomadic and collaborative praxis approach to fashion-tech design. Unlike other designers, who may have set places and spaces of production, Wipprecht prefers to embed herself within R&D work settings such as Intel, Autodesk, or Microsoft. Once on site, she builds partnerships with internal teams to develop new designs that respond to technical needs, embark on explorations, or undertake media showcasing of new fashion-tech technologies. The majority of Wipprecht’s work of the last fours years has been the result of client-based commissions and sponsorships from some of the biggest tech industries in America, allowing her unheralded access to new technologies, materials, and processes, not to mention high-profile platforms for the presentation of her completed designs. As an epistemic culture, it is one that is often times predicated on a client’s needs to create a better aesthetics and/or stories around emergent technologies in the form of desirable fashion-tech displays. In this way, one of the biggest challenges is balancing the need to showcase a clients’ technology with maintaining a consistent signature design. Keeping this goal in mind, Wipprecht’s fashion tech has been structured around a techno-futurist aesthetic that (to date) consistently features 3D printing, robotics, sensors, exoskeletons, and leather.

Wipprecht’s works often result from opportunities to forge into new materials and technical or expressive explorations with both clients and collaborators, in what she calls a “collision of practices.” As notes Wipprecht: “The best context for collaborating is when someone wants to get into fashion” [18]. For example, the Smoke Dress, developed for a 2013 Volkswagen car show, resulted in a collaboration with Italian architect Niccolo Casas. Harnessing the opportunity to fund a new series of works, Wipprecht invited Casas to participate in developing the new pieces for VW. Their collaboration provided an opportunity for Casas to experiment in the field of fashion (he has since become one of Iris Van Herpen’s main collaborators in the fabrication of her 3D-printed fashions), while Wipprecht benefited from the hands-on tutelage of Casas to master the 3D software Maya for fashion-design use. In this way, both designers could benefit by expanding their skill sets while creating new work, a common strategy for Wipprecht.

Technology.

In fact, the Smoke Dress had an earlier iteration, presented at the TechnoSensual exhibition (prototyped with Dutch fashion technologist Aduen Darriba), prior to its VW redesign. In explaining the initial prototyping process for the Smoke Dress, Wipprecht describes how she (and Darriba) first experimented with the use of smoke machines to visualize the effects on the body. Wipprecht often begins with ideas, images, or concepts that later spur and feed technical experimentation. Examples of this process include: the visual effect of ink floating in water, as s starting point for the Pseudomorphs dress (developed at V2_ in 2009); the idea of a “disappearing” garment, which informed the Intimacy 2 dress (also developed at V2_ in 2009); and finally the notion of social invisibility, propelling the idea of the Smoke Dress. Once the concept is established, Wipprecht engages in a process of visualization—both through tangible mock-ups and collage/moodboards—in order to map the placement of technologies, as well as the interactive system’s architecture, on the body, thus defining the garment’s shape. As Wipprecht cautions, “You can visualize through photos or drawing, but with interaction you need to physically see it in action” [18].

Early in the design process, accommodation for technical needs and limitations is at the forefront of the design parameters. For example, questions around battery and wire placement can dictate the shape and style of the garment, as in the case of Fergie (of the Black Eyed Peas, performers at the Super Bowl 2011 halftime show), where the batteries were located on the shoulders as epaulettes, instead of around the waist, in order to preserve the pop star’s silhouette. In the case of the Smoke Dress, the overall shape of the garment was structured in an hourglass shape as a consequence of accommodating the smoke machine in the lower-torso section; while the Spider Dress features black spheres (that look like eyes) integrated into the design in order to conceal the proximity sensors. Notes Wipprecht, “my style is created out of the spaces that I create around the body in order to place the electronics.” Hence, as a design process, it is one that is predicated on action and tacit experiments that oscillate between the concepts and technical possibilities. This performative model of discovery—which engages in a process of virtual-to-tangible modelling—dictates the final garment’s shape, style, and materiality.

The idea for Spider Dress stemmed from a short, experimental stop-motion video featuring an analog puppet mechanism placed on the body, which was produced in collaboration with Viennese programmer/technologist Daniel Schatzmayr. After posting the video online and receiving an enthusiastic number of “likes” literally overnight, the duo proceeded to create the piece in earnest. In this way, the Internet could even be considered as a collaborator/performer, as it instigated the development of the piece.

Spider Dress is based on the idea of creating personal space for its wearer. Conceived as an “aggressive” and perhaps even anti-social wearable, it features animatronic arachnid limbs that are activated by the presence and approach of others. Protecting its human “prey,” this exoskeleton can enact twelve different behavioural states, depending on the type of approach (fast/slow, back/front, etc.), featuring different speeds and combinations of activations for the spider legs. Spider Dress was developed in two iterative processes (Wipprecht often reworks previous designs): the first version was created with Schatzmayr; the second, in collaboration with Intel. The principal difference, other than the showcasing and embedding—and the Intel Edison chip in the second design—is the color. In our interview, Wipprecht emphasizes the importance of aesthetic choices in choreographing wearables’ interactions, and notes how the first version, fabricated in black, was too menacing, and thus antithetical to interaction [18].

Fashion Tech.

Spider Dress was manufactured using PA-12 material via 3D printing using SLS (selective laser sintering) techniques at Materialise in Belgium. Meanwhile, the upper dress bodice was developed in collaboration with Studio Palermo in Austria. Wipprecht describes the inner workings of the Spider Dress as follows:

The Edison module runs embedded Linux, the design is programmed in Python. The dress interactions are defined in “twelve states of behavior” through two Mini Maestro twelve-channel USB servo controllers from Pololu, and uses inverse kinematics. I am working with twenty small 939 MG metal gear servos (0.14 s.60°/0.13 s.60°—stall torque 2.5 kg.cm/2.7 kg.cm). All servos run back to the system. I am also working with Dynamixels (XL-320 series) of Robotis, which are super-nice to work with, as they are smart, strong, and very accurate [19].

Spider Dress works via a series of embedded sensors that react intelligently to the ambient interactions it encounters. The 3D-printed robotic shell is enabled with proximity and breath sensors that trigger the carapace’s movements. Wipprecht explains: “Using wireless biometric signals, the system makes inferences based on the stress level in your body. It can differentiate between twelve states of behavior.” The behavior of the legs modulates depending on the speed at which one approaches the devices, as well the wearer’s physiological reaction as measured by her breath. The technology powering these effects are a combination of an Intel Edison bluetooth controller and a Maxbotix proximity sensor encased in the dark globe at the front of the wearable. Wipprecht’s arachnid wearable thus operates as a collaborative visualization of events both within the wearer (breath and proximity) and through the actions and reactions of those surrounding the wearer (speed of approach, distance to fashion-tech garment, length of stay, and sequence of movements). Hence, the movements of the legs are an amalgam of the performance of fashion, body, and technology as encountered both on the wearer’s body and through the public’s interactions. In this way, the Spider Dress is a co-created performance involving wearer, device, and public.

Collaboration.

While Wipprecht is hired by companies and sponsors to create fashion-tech designs that promote and showcase their technologies (software, hardware, automobiles), the element of social interaction, relatability, or “readability” is paramount in her design choices, both from an aesthetic and an interaction standpoint. For the designer, a wearable piece has several layers of interaction, of which approachability is the first. The white, Intel version (or albino, as she calls it) of the Spider Dress was altered in order to enhance this first layer of interaction. Wipprecht had felt that the first (black) design was too ominous, and hence did not invite the public/user to approach it. Second, the shape of the design itself, explains Wipprecht, should reveal, or announce, its nature/character from afar [18]. Thus, the 3D-printed, spider-like legs and overall dress structure announce early on that the garment will feature animalistic qualities. Furthermore, for the designer, fashion tech should speak to all audiences, including (perhaps most of all) those uninitiated to wearables, fashion tech, or this type of technology. With the Spider Dress, because of the strong visual spider theme, the behavioral dimension of the design is easily relatable to almost anyone, as a spider is both recognizable and behaviorally predictable. This known, or “readable,” motif makes the garment that much more successful, according to Wipprecht, because it can be immediately accepted and understood, and does not require initiation or special knowledge. Like fashion, which at all ends of the design spectrum must be socially recognizable (e.g., what is the value of a luxury item that cannot be recognized as such?), the wearable, too, must fit into an ecology of fashion.

Considering Wipprecht’s design process, we may surmise that her epistemic culture is one of demand, availability, and co-design: the demand of the client/market to create something for a specific context (a spectacular Super Bowl halftime-show garment; an Audi/VW brigade of tech-dressed car presenters; or an Intel/Edison intelligent dress); availability because through tech-industry partnerships like Intel, Autodesk, and Materialise, Wipprecht secures access to special resources, which she engineers toward fashion-tech outcomes. And, finally, co-design, as the internal workings of this nomadic studio practice is primarily choreographed around friendships, the sharing of skills, and the collective pursuit of developing new technologies for the body. Thus, Wipprecht’s pieces are rarely a solo process—or a solo vision, for that matter—and the public is often invited to witness, provide aid (crowdsourcing via social media for help and tips), and weigh in on the evolution of the designs as she posts process images online and via social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook).

Bodies/Interaction.

When planning the body’s actions and the “attitude” of the wearable, Wipprecht works through a number of different scenarios. The piece’s attitude comes together in the final stages, often in the context of the photoshoot, which is also often the first time all the parts are seen together and on a body. The styling and choice of model further influences the feeling of the piece, together with choices over how to perform for the camera, all the while emphasizing certain parts of the wearable above others. Wipprecht describes the process:

For example, in the Spider Dress photo the model is looking down, the system gets more attention this way. It depends what you want to highlight. Do you want to take away a little bit of the face and the information through that? And, what kind of attitude do you want to create with it. That is what you mostly do with the photo shoot. This is the place where you figure out the piece’s identity and the DNA [18].

The performance and presentation contexts of the Spider Dress were guided by Intel’s need to promote a new product—the Intel Edison chip. Hence, presentations of this iteration of the Spider Dress took place principally at tech events, such as the Consumer Electronic Show (CES), held in Las Vegas every January. As trade fairs are focused on “demo-ing” new technologies to industry and media audiences, the Spider Dress was presented in a format Wipprecht calls a “walking act,” wherein the model walks amongst the attendees and demonstrates the work. In the case of CES, the Spider Dress was additionally accompanied by a small flock of 3D-printed robotic spiders, mirroring the wearable via an ambulatory cluster creatures of similar design.

Beyond the need to promote industrial clients is Wipprecht’s overarching aim to craft new forms of intimacy via wearables. Inspired by the social challenges faced by many in their efforts to connect, assimilate, and build appropriate social “fronts,” Wipprecht’s designs speak for the socially awkward, resistive, and ambivalent [20]. For Wipprecht, social malaise is a universal concern, which is perhaps most directly tackled in her recent project Agent Unicorn. Developed in collaboration with the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, Agent Unicorn is a wearable adapted for ADHD kids. Playfully designed to look like a unicorn horn, and fabricated via 3D printing, it monitors moments of concentration (when the wearer is still and focused) and communicates this information back to the child/wearer. In this way, affected children can better identify and understand their own patterns of attention/inattention, and thus act on them in a more deliberate fashion.

However, Wipprecht is adamant that the interactions and experiences offered by wearables go well beyond the panacea of health, fitness, and happiness too often marketed via consumer wearables [18]. Rather, Wipprecht pushes her wearables into uncomfortable emotional terrains of anger, shyness, indecency, or misfire. As Wipprecht notes, she is interested in how “these systems around our bodies intuitively might both behave and misbehave … wearables should not behave, because we are misbehaving most of the time, or at least I do. Wearables should provoke the idea of making us better, by calling us out.” Hence, in the choreography of her fashion-tech wearables, Wipprecht aims at the co-structuring of experience with the garment. She is chiefly interested in how we perform with the wearable, as well as the potential for it to perform for us, and even solicit better, or more authentic performances from us. As notes the designer, “If you wear a design that you partly control and it partly extends your agency through its autonomous actions, you start to question where you end and my system begins.”

This symbiotic performance proposes new ways of thinking about how wearables can extend performatively around and with our bodies, as well as through our mental and emotional states. In a way, one could argue that Wipprecht is interested in breaking the artificiality of the “front” and other social constructions proposed by sociologists like Austin and Goffman more than half a century ago [7, 20]. Her work expresses a dimension of social breakage and re-invention that both resembles König’s concept of sartorial deviance and elucidates the states of non-closure and transition as described in Turner’s theory of “liminoid” states [12,13,14, 21]. Given this line of thought, is it possible to imagine a future in which it will be acceptable for our garments to push people away, or obliterate us in a cloud of smoke when we grow tired of someone or are uncomfortable speaking to them? To be sure, these scenarios, in being more complex and contradictory, are also richer than many of the socially interactive platforms that we engage with today.

3.3 Diffus

The next case study considers the work of Danish design studio Diffus. In the fall of 2011, invited by Diffus, I participated in the Copenhagen Artist in Residency program (CPH AIR), and, later that fall, in the Danish International Visiting Artist (DIVA) program via an invitation from Aarhus University. The CPH AIR provided me with an atelier space at the Fabrikken: Factory of Art and Design, where artists have access to traditional fine-arts workshops for wood, metal, and painting. During this residency, I worked with Diffus’ co-directors, Hanne-Louise Johannesen and Michel Guglielmi, at their research office/atelier. While at Diffus, I familiarized myself with their various wearables and interactive textile designs, as well as their material libraries, and collaborated on brainstorming sessions with local and international partners: Alexandra Instituttet (Denmark), Forster Rohner (Switzerland), and Cetemmsa (Spain).

Background.

Diffus design is a multidisciplinary, materials-focused studio working at the intersection of theory and application in art, industrial design, architecture, smart fabrics, and wearables. In existence since 2004, they have developed a number of client-based works and projects that highlight material innovation with design excellence. Wearables have comprised a part of their research focus, though not exclusively. Johannesen has a master’s degree in art history and has worked as assistant professor in visual culture at the University of Copenhagen, and now teaches at the IT University of Copenhagen, while Guglielmi is an architect working with tangible media and interaction design, who teaches at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in the schools of architecture and design.

Laboratory Culture.

Diffus describes its approach as both practical and theoretical, wherein which art, culture, aesthetics, and technology all play equal parts in informing design decisions. Particularly, they are interested in experimenting at the intersection of traditional know-how (and craft) combined with new materials in order to create both “soft” and complex technologies. Recognized for their attention to detail in design, Diffus is increasingly sought out by international companies and universities to contribute to the conceptualization of new “smart” designs. Their added value, they assert, is in creating aesthetic objects from technological and innovative materials from various textile and research industries [22]. In their quest to create designs (and meaning) out of brute materiality, Guglielmi and Johannesen often approach their task from a philosophical point of view, wherein feelings and concepts about materials, bodies, and interaction guide the decision process and feed into the final design. In this way, the firm seeks to innovate designs that “appeal to our emotional self and open up to the sensibility of a large public.”

The Diffus studio is a small, intimate space located in Copenhagen’s central Vesterbrø neighbourhood and situated in a former residential building with other creative studios. The Diffus workspace, however, also extends to remoter spaces, including: their personal and teaching settings, and the laboratories of collaborators and service industries—all depending on material needs or convenience of work flow. Many collaborators intersect in their design development process, including seamstresses, engineers, 3D printers, and other textile/material professionals. Because of Diffus’ location in the EU, many of their clients, partners, and collaborators come from government-funded research grants (such as Horizon 20/20), putting them in direct contact with small and medium enterprises, notably in the field of industrial design—Pilotfish (Germany), VanBerlo (Netherlands), Fuelfor (Spain), and Zaha Hadid Architects and Base Structures (UK)—as well as research universities—Delft University (Netherlands), Southampton University (UK), Polytechnic Milano (Italy)—and graduate students. In this way, Diffus is able to benefit from a large network of materials and research resources that both inspire and feed the direction of their projects. As Johannesen mentions in the course of our interview, these collaborations open up the studio to new and not-yet-distributed (or published) processes and materials, which guides the design concept phases and tangible possibilities. Furthermore, says Guglielmi, the EU grants also offer precious time for reflection and discussion—key to developing aesthetic and material concepts and ideas.

Technology.

Materials are the essence, or core, of Diffus. As explains Guglielmi, “We always try to remember where we come from, which is, exploring the possibilities of creating reactive materials from a design standpoint. Sometimes we try to go back to those roots, as a way of remembering” [22]. A key way in which this materiality is concretized, from a research point of view, is through an ever-expanding “sample book.” Functioning much like a materials library, this sample book permits Diffus to archive and collect materials (which they may have encountered or tested during research), as well as to communicate their skill set to potential clients or collaborators. Explains Johannesen, “the sample library acts as a very active communicator” [22]. In these sample books are contained various kinds of conductive materials (yarns, textiles, metal components) and processes (inks, embroidery), through which they highlight their past projects, breakthroughs, and expertise. While these tests are often the result of contracts and requests on the part of collaborators, Guglielmi notes that the process is not always systematic, but consists more of “making associations from materials that you use in one field and looking at the possibilities of translating them through small adaptations that you find interesting as a designer” [22]. In either case, experimentation and research are “more or less equal” for the design process at Diffus [22].

Through their EU and client networks, and via their extensive experience and expertise, much of the work at Diffus is client-oriented. In this way, the epistemic culture of the lab is driven by external needs and opportunities (both financial and materials-based). It is in part through such a process that the Climate Dress was developed in 2009. The dress was conceived as a proof-of-concept collaboration with the Swiss textile company Forster Rohner, funded in part by the Alexandra Instituttet, a Danish technology think tank. Seeing a need to diversify their core business of haute couture embroidery and lace manufacturing, Forster Rohner has embarked upon engineering embroidery for smart fabrics. Led by Dr. Jan Zimmermann, head of textile innovations at Forster Rohner, the company has been developing smart fabrics for various textile and design uses (from fashion to architecture to auto industries) adapted to the integration of hardware, such as LEDs, sensors, and batteries. The partnership with Diffus emerged from mutual needs: that of Forster Rohner, to showcase their new expertise in smart embroidery fabrication; and of Diffus, to secure access to emergent processes and industry techniques for smart textiles. The Climate Dress features a combination of conductive embroidery parts, embroidered LEDs, a C02 sensor, and an Arduino to compute and manage the data inputs and outputs. The dress is designed to be wearable as a visible air-quality sensor, which can navigate various geolocated spaces and assess environmental air quality. The dress alerts the wearer and those near the dress to distressing levels of C02, both to warn the public over air quality and to sensitize them to the dangers of pollution.

Fashion.

The partnership between Diffus and Forster Rohner was initiated through an invitation to showcase a design within the context of the COP15 Climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009. Some of the parameters that the design duo took into consideration when developing this piece included: creating a garment using traditional craft; revealing information through aesthetics; and creating a new relationship with embroidery that featured technology. Hence, the Climate Dress was born from a desire to fuse craft and tech in such a manner that would aesthetically reveal its functionality. Inspired by the methods of turn-of-the-century French architect Gustav Eiffel and his decorative use of metal structures, Diffus set out to create a garment that could build on the concept via embroidery rather than steel. Created in under two months, the process saw meetings between students from the Danish Design School, technicians from the Alexandra Instituttet, and the technical team at Forster Rohner. Diffus describes their primary work as mediating between the various participants and collaborators in order to arrive at the results they aimed for. Along the way, considerations had to be made for the capacity of the conductive thread and LEDs to adequately illustrate C02 levels in a visually cohesive and pleasing manner. Guglielmi describes the process of negotiating needs with aesthetics:

The interaction played a major role in the design of the embroidery and indirectly in the design of the garment on which the embroidery would be applied. More LEDs with more processing abilities could have been added but we needed to constrain ourselves to clear interaction rules between CO 2 levels and the LED patterns as pulse. Those clear rules influenced the design of the circuit layout as well as the design of the required algorithm [17].

Because the departure point for research at Diffus is materials exploration, it makes sense that the fashion (and aesthetic) frameworks are built around technical and interaction needs. Instead of seeing this as a limitation, the Diffus team is inspired to make “form follow function,” as coined by American architect Louis Sullivan. Interestingly, Johannesen refers to Adolf Loos, also a proponent of functional architecture, as an inspiration for their design ethos. She explains: “I think that because of someone like Loos, I was scared to go into something to do with embroidery, because embroidery is just ornament. I think it is really interesting, then, to give this ornament a functionality. Trying to respect Loos, and at the same time subvert him, or being subversive towards him” [22]. Another concrete example of this philosophy in action is the Solar Handbag, created in collaboration with Forster Rohner, the Alexandra Instituttet, and the Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil, in Switzerland—and also the outcome of an EU-funded research grant. The bag uses solar cells to power portable devices; instead of concealing the solar cells, Diffus approached the problem similarly to the Climate Dress, making the square cells an integral part of the exterior fabric and design.

In this way, the Diffus studio is closely guided by the quest to discover appropriate form and function through materiality. In describing his action- and time-based performative laboratory, Pickering outlines how human agency’s intentionality must be mediated through the nonhuman agencies of matter, machines, and things. Because Pickering’s “dance of agency” proceeds across this human-nonhuman negotiation, which unfolds via temporal emergence, outcomes can neither be forced nor predicted. Diffus’ philosophical approach to integrating new technologies into design in a holistic and self-evident way is, in my opinion, indicative of a performative laboratory approach. Rather than force ideas about interaction, use, or aesthetics onto a material or a technology, the studio embraces the process of discovering these things, of seeing them revealed through the process. In this way, their studio often arrives at results that fittingly display and propose a logic (and aesthetic) of use that may have not been readily apparent at the start, but which springs from the nature of the initial material. For these reasons, it is not unreasonable to see their process—focused primarily as it is on creating interaction and design out of technology—as inherently performative.

Body/Interaction.

The designs of Diffus—wearables or otherwise—are always informed with the body in mind, in consideration both of how the body will react to the design and how it will interact with it. Concern over touch, texture, manipulation, and interaction feeds many of their form and material design decisions. In this way, the emphasis on materiality subscribes to the project of the re-embodiment and re-materialization of the technical object, as opposed to screen and data streams. Johannesen explains their position on materiality: “When you work with technology and you work with human beings using the technology, it has to somehow occur within an experience. I think that we are working with technology that wants to be noticed, and thereby, it enters the fashion area” [22]. For Diffus, interaction, aesthetics, and technology are inextricably intertwined.

One could also argue that Diffus’ performative design matrix builds on new-media concepts of embodiment and experience. Foregrounding the body (touch, sight, movement, etc.), they bring a phenomenological dimension to the experience of their wearables. Diffus’ work thus focuses on how design objects can, through good design and style, enter into the world of body-centric, sensuous, and interactively rewarding experiences, which reposition the body at the center of the technological question. Not surprisingly, as Diffus works for clients seeking new forms of expression for materials that have yet to find a use, meaning, or shape, their work often consists in unlocking (and scripting) the interactive and poetical dimensions of matter. More than orchestrating new functionalities for technologies and smart materials, the Diffus team believes their design objects should also offer a respite and meditation for the future user, opening a door to deeper experiences. However, as they are well aware, designing for technology, as Guglielmi notes, is “a polarity, really. On the one side, the need to do things simpler, and on the other side, exploring the complexity of structures, materials, and so on. It is about finding the balance between those things” [22]. As a performative platform, their designs invite the sensing, sensitive, living, touching body back into the technology, both through attention to detail and a sensibility toward form that follows function.

3.4 3lectromode

The last case study concerns my own DIY artistic wearables practices through my company 3lectromode. For several years, while researching this topic for my PhD, I have been active in creating accessible DIY wearable platforms that borrow equally from the culture of at-home garment sewing (i.e., Vogue and McCall’s patterns) and hobbyist electronics. These platforms and communication devices have been produced at my label’s atelier, as well as at various collaborative institutions—Hexagram Institute (Montreal), V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam), Fabrikken for Kunst & Design (Copenhagen), Oboro (Montreal), and InterAccess (Toronto)—and been funded primarily through grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Concordia University Part-Time Faculty Association. During this time, I have also participated in a number of residencies, conferences, and other events to trace the limits and potentials of this emerging field. Residencies have included the Danish International Visiting Artist program (DIVA), hosted by the Department of Information and Media (IMV) Studies at Aarhus University, where I delivered a conference presentation titled “Kitchen Table Wearables,” together with a series of workshops with design students titled “How to Knit Your Own Computer.” Other conferences on the subjects of DIY and performance include an “Open Wearables” panel and workshop, which I led at ISEA 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey; an “Open Hardware Summit,” held at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in New York City in 2012; MEDEA’s “Prototyping Futures” conference in Malmö, Sweden, also in 2012, which examined emergent DIY technologies; and the MODE@MOTI symposium in Breda, Netherlands, in 2013, as part of a master class in fashion and technology where I tested my ideas on the link between fashion tech and Modern-era innovation.

Background.

In short, I have been active in researching and testing the limits of e-textiles and DIY culture in informing wearables aesthetics and production methods. The field of e-textiles, while lacking the finesse and resources of more industrial or academic research projects, offers a rich platform of collaborative and self-directed explorations for embedding electronics in garments. In this sense, my atelier is more like an artist studio than a design company or service-oriented studio. Due to the nature of the funding—arts exploration grants—the projects are, for the most part, self-directed and independently developed. That said, the techno-arts atelier of today relies on a number of external industries and resources that directly impact on the design. As I argued in my talk “Open Design Practices + Wearables + 3lectromode” (ISEA 2011), there is a growing body of research describing the shift in production paradigms taking place as a result of the proliferation of new technologies, machines, and shared expertise, as seen in the “Maker” movement. Examples of this increased access range from the multiplication of shared physical spaces offering access to rapid-prototyping technologies (fab labs and hacker spaces) to the expanding networked possibilities of “print-on-demand” services for remote 3D printing, as well as textile and circuit printing. Increasingly, the arts and design “laboratory” has much in common with the cottage industries that existed before the Industrial Revolution, with small artist/artisan spaces playing critical roles in fabrication processes and choices, all the while retaining control over the end-product or design—an element that Modern production chains had all but erased [23,24,25]. Hence, for a field such as wearables design, access to machines, technicians, and materials can make all the difference. This dimension of DIY wearables has been explored in a number of how-to and instructional publications [17, 26,27,28]. Much like fashion designers who began their careers with a collection of accessible equipment, like home sewing machines and sergers housed in basement studios, the wearables designer and techno-crafter of today has access to a fast-growing palette of technologies and tools—from LilyPad Arduinos, conductive threads, and inks, to remote technical resources like laser cutters, textiles, and 3D printers—to create her/his creations.

Laboratory Culture.

3lectromode is a small design atelier run by myself as designer/owner, together with a variety of other experts from textiles, fashion, and engineering and media arts who work on an ad-hoc basis on various aspects of designing, developing, making, and disseminating or marketing fashion-tech designs. Our designs range from material explorations, fashion-tech design, and workshops that straddle the communities of high-tech, craft, arts, product design, and speculative design. Key to 3lectromode’s design ethos is the desire to create a library of executable open-source fashion designs that may be assembled as kits by anyone with an interest in wearables, electronics, or fashion.

Performativity in the 3lectromode laboratory occurs among the individuals on site in the atelier, together with the extended community of users and collaborators, from pattern makers to textile specialists, graphic designers, and engineers. The team works toward a functional wearable aimed at satisfying a number of parameters, from the aesthetic and technical standpoints, a central one being the ability to be built by anyone. For this reason, all steps for producing (and reproducing) an 3lectromode wearable are integrated and communicated via the design itself. This is done by means of graphically illustrating the placement of all necessary parts—from electronics, batteries, sensors, circuit layout, to buttons and garment sewing—needed to assemble a functional wearable. Hence, many of the design parameters depend on the construction of a product that can be translated into a functioning wearable design. In this way, DIY culture expands the possibilities for anyone and everyone wishing to participate in it. By making the design and electronics open-source and accessible, 3lectromode, like many electronics companies that publish instructional videos, blogs, and schematics, including Arduino and Adafruit, allows the general public access to various toolkits for the construction of wearables, thus contributing to the collective effervescence and activity in the field.

Technology.

As a case in point, Strokes&Dots was designed with the intention of communicating the fabrication process of wearables to a general audience. Part of a micro-collection of sixteen garments, Strokes&Dots was inspired by early Modernist representations of speed, graphic design, abstract art, and technology—as well as the print work of Russian/French textile visionary Sonia Delaunay. We began the design process by looking at early Modernist textile pattern and fabrication processes, which flourished during the early twentieth century. To begin with, a series of watercolor graphics inspired by Delaunay were created as design explorations. Next, we created four different garment patterns around which to build the collection: a top, a shirt, a skirt, and a dress. Then we digitized the watercolor graphics and made them into textile patterns that could later be integrated into the (also) digitized garment patterns, created on a 1:1 scale in large Adobe Illustrator files. Finally, we integrated the layout guidelines for the placement of the electronics, which could later be machine- or hand-sewn with conductive threads onto the wearable. The digital document, now containing schematics of the transformed watercolor graphics, the garment pattern layout for sewing, and the electronics placement guides, was printed on Japanese Hobotai silk with a Mimaki digital textile printer at the Hexagram Institute at Concordia University. While the electronics guides were printed on a “bottom” layer along with the textile graphics, the “top” layer, a slightly thinner fabric, acted as light diffuser for the integrated LEDs. From a material standpoint, the Strokes&Dots kit contains: a textile printout featuring the outline of the garment pattern and the layout placement for the electronics, which include: a LilyPad Arduino, an accelerometer or light sensor, and five to twelve (depending on the design) embroidered, responsive LEDs. The garments are reactive depending on the types of movements made by the individual wearing them. Three states of LED light displays were embedded into the design to communicate with the wearer and those nearby. The first state is when the wearer is at rest, and the lights cycle through lighting each LED to display its presence. When the wearer moves more dynamically, the LEDs respond by lighting up more actively and randomly, as though they had be “woken up” or charged. Inversely, when the wearer stops moving for a long period of time, the LEDs display a warning sequence, in which all the lights light up at once and flash, indicating that the person should perhaps move. This playful communication between the wearer and the garment expresses the interactions taking place, and having taken place, for all to see. In this way, they become a second layer of communication for all to “read”.

As kits, which can be sold, constructed at home or in DIY wearables ateliers, or sewed in workshops or educational contexts, they are design objects that reveal their fabrication process and thus transform the user into a maker (or at the very least, a “learner”). This method takes some of the initial guesswork out of electronics assembly, while allowing the user to create a customized and fashionable design. As each piece is uniquely designed and comes with customizable options for different print patterns, colors, and sizes, the designs aim to give the user/designer agency in fabricating his/her own iteration. Computational variations are also included to modify the LilyPad Arduino program, with the aim of simplifying the programming one step further. So far, 3lectromode designs have focused on integration of LEDs with various sensors, using the LilyPad Arduino platform for electronic components and programming. However, this is but a starting point for later iterations, which may integrate other emerging DIY technologies, as well as customizable options, thus adding to the landscape of maker-directed wearables. The 3lectromode label’s next goal is to develop a maker/meeting space to foster community exchange and building around DIY wearables, as seen internationally in events such as Fashion Hack Day (Berlin) and the E-Textiles Summer Camp (Loire Valley, France).

Fashion.

Beyond the mission to create a kit that can visually communicate how they can be built, a second important driver in the Strokes&Dots project is the creation of a collection of interactive objects that can stand on their own in the world of fashion. Being as many fashion-tech projects are one-off designs, this element of reproducibility in the studio was ever important to create a large collection, as opposed to a singular prototype. In this way, the sixteen stylistically connected garments could be deployed as a micro-collection on the runway, or in other live events. Furthermore, the wearability—the ability for the garments to be worn in the everyday, on a variety of bodies, of varied ages, and for a prolonged periods of time, like at a cocktail party, art opening, or fashion show—further reaffirmed their viability as fashion objects. Aesthetically, the Strokes&Dots garments had to “pass” as fashion first and electronics second in order to make headway into the universe of fashion. With this goal in mind, the wearables were fabricated with silk and followed the shape of prêt-à-porter fashion; in other words, the garments are meant for “everyone” and for “anytime” contexts. These stylistic and functional factors meant that the studio was able to mount traditional fashion shows (D-Moment, 2014; Academos, 2015) with the interactive garments, as well as participate in a number of public events (Augmented World Expo 2014; Boston Consulting Group 2014; CES Las Vegas and New York 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015). Having the garments stylistically echo fashion trends was important, enhancing visibility and in this way providing ample testing grounds to engage in live presentations, as well as encounters with a diverse public.

Body/Interaction.

Finally, as a performative object, what does the wearable communicate? In the case of Strokes&Dots, a few elements can be identified. First, as they are disseminated as kits, the garments are often worn by their makers, and hence are tangible testimony of their maker’s process and skill, as expressed in the wearing. A close collaboration with the technology is enacted, as the wearable’s “performance” runs parallel to that of the lived—and creative—body that wears it. As the technology (the accelerometer or light sensors that give information on the body’s movements or environment) is set into motion, the effects (LEDs, in the case of the DIY Social Skin) have an expressive dimension not fully controllable by the actual and situated body. At times, one might have the impression that the technology speaks with, for, or even on top of the body. This duplicitous relationship between a self-unfolding technology, a garment as fashion expression (what says “technophile” more than embedded technologies in your clothing?), and a body in action reflects the complex, negotiated performativity that is the wearable.

Two strong messages arise out of the culture of DIY wearables, as exemplified in 3lectromode’s design strategy. The first concerns the individual’s participation in the construction of technology, or otherwise getting dirty, beyond the smooth surfaces of the Web 2.0 culture of input apps and content interface screens. The second touches on the political act of wearing your technology as a craft movement. As a performative object, the DIY wearable is not a consumer item, but rather an object of technological affirmation for the masses. More than putting on a wearable gadget, DIY electronics and interfaces are about the storytelling and the individual’s David-versus-Goliath struggle to have a voice in an increasingly technologized environment. One could even argue that it is a creative form of performative resistance to popular consumer tech culture, which forces the wearer and others to position themselves vis-à-vis the greater landscape and politics of an increasingly technocratic society.

4 Conclusion

The above four wearables case studies invite us to reflect on how performance informs wearables and fashion tech’s epistemic cultures of production and internal systems of performance occurring in the studio/atelier/laboratory. By following key works produced within each studio, we see how performative potentials are seeded though the course of their conceptualization and developmental processes. Furthermore, we can see how contemporary wearables are pushing the boundaries of performance through design, style, interaction, and use of technology by infusing their works with questions of social interaction, emotions, poetry, agency, bodies, and politics. In each case study we encounter the processes, agendas, tools, materials, dreams, and struggles at play within the theater of wearables creation. Furthermore, each case study proposes a new angle on the kind of performance unfolding in the studio, from those of collaborative industry research in fashion tech (Wipprecht); to smart-fabrics innovation via fashion and design (Diffus); and from DIY e-textile production (3lectromode); to the rethinking of HCI scenarios via wearable design (XS Labs). Most importantly, however, we become aware of performance’s role as central to the raison d’être of the wearable, as it is present its logic of use. In other words, wearables need bodies, fashion, and technology, and each of these facets contributes to how a wearable is experienced. The performance of robotics mixed with emotion, as seen in the world of Wipprecht, or the acrobatic interaction scenarios proposed by Berzowska through CEBB, both point to the body performing with technology. Furthermore, these examples confirm how the wearable would be devoid of meaning without a body to push up against it (sometimes literally), and without the shapes and materials that inform/comprise them. The same can be said of how matter performs over the course of its process toward becoming an “intelligent” design, as seen in the Diffus studio; or the proposition that DIY wearables can offer appreciation and knowledge through their hands-on production and deployment. In the contemporary wearables atelier, we encounter a positioning vis-à-vis wearables’ capacity to offer new experiences for the body, as well as new relationships to fashion and technology.