Making Mobilities

Pop-Up Prototype Launch

Date: Friday 14^th Dec
Time: 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Address: Woolmark Resource Centre, Unit 3305, 33/F, AIA Kowloon Tower, Landmark East, 100 How Ming Street, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong.

About

Image Credit: Maja Sieczko

Come and join a group of Australian artists and designers at the end of a three week journey across China, working with maker spaces and industry partners to design speculative and critical Wearable prototypes that are making our future mobile. Prototype presentations followed by drinks and nibbles (free admission).

Wearable technology is an exponentially growing sector. Markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (sensor and actuator) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. We live within the Internet of Things and Smart Cities are becoming reality.

No longer are we tethered to our tech through power cables, wearable technology enables freedom of movement. Technology is embedded in our bodies and the very fabric of clothes, augmenting our bodies, enabling mobility. The mobilities paradigm is reframing our future.

The Prototypes

SOLAR

SOLAR is a solar powered jacket, built not only for the flexible materials of today’s clothing but for the flexible needs of tomorrows future. By energizing our clothing, we can energize ourselves, pushing ourselves to be more mobile and able to adapt to the elements around us. We believe a long-distance hiking jacket is the best method by which to demonstrate the flourishing relationship of technology and fashion and it’s benefits to humanity. This design can target both hiking enthusiasts and be inviting enough to involve even those outside that community through a human and natural minimalist design.
Visit Solar Instructables Page

STRYDE

STRYDE gives amateur and intermediate runners the same insights available to professional athletes with low-cost, aesthetic and convenient wearables. Working on a pair of tights incorporating sensors to analyse landing and movement, as well as an auditory device to help runners maintain a consistent pace. The compression running tights communicate sensor readings back to a PC or mobile where a model for comparison can be used to provide feedback about what aspects of the runner’s stride may be improved. Ultimately these wearables aim to help mobile individuals improve performance, prevent injury and better understand their fitness activities.
Visit Stryde Instructables Page

UVU

UVU (ultra violet you) aims to promote awareness about skin damage from solar rays and ultra violet radiation within the Australian context. The Australian summer on average has one of the highest UV indexes, regularly reaching an intensity of 9.5, that can cause permeant damage to skin cells within 15 minutes. UVU aims to tackle this through focusing on the education surrounding ultra violet radiation and skin cancer. The initial concept is the UVU snap band, this band will sense the current UV level and the wearers exposure and convey this to the user. This is in the aim of highlighting the time it takes for damage to be caused, to encourage sun safety practice and focus on ingraining habitual habits.
Visit UVU Instructables Page

SHENSUO

SHENSUO is an adaptive skirt which aids in mobility via on board temperature regulation. Measuring via humidity and temperature sensors the Shensuo can find the user’s desired comfortability range and adjust itself to help to moderate insulation. The pleated skirt is composed of two elements, one opaque and one sheer panel. Once triggered the motors will adjust the angle of the pleated panels to expose the sheer side of the pleated (when adjusting to cool) and the opaque element (when adjusting to warmth). Day to night adaptive design also aids in aesthetic transition allowing for social mobility. The wearable also addresses day to night aesthetic requirements, adaptive to the rapid changing environment and social requirements of cosmopolitan target market – the wearable may use a time sensor to adapt to evening wear (e.g. past 7pm) or a manual plate trigger. This is addressed by an automated cinching function which draws the pleats inward to create a more streamlined fitted evening dress aesthetic.
Visit Shensuo Instructables Page

Event Dates

Sydney: 19 – 21 Sep 2018
China: 26 Nov – 15 Dec 2018

About

UNSW HIF Cloud workshop, organised by the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia, is an international, interdisciplinary hands-on workshop that takes place in Australia and China.

After the event in Sydney in September 2018, it will bring 18 students to 3 cities in China (Beijing, Hong Kong and Shenzhen), where the students will work together in creating wearable projects!

Let’s have a quick look at the projects and the teams!

If you are into hiking, just like us. The Solar project is exactly what you need! This project will be a good example to demonstrate the flourishing relationship between technology and fashion and it’s benefits to humanity. If you are not a hiking enthusiast, this jacket can also be a good way for you to experience human and natural minimalist design. The jacket is built not only for the flexible materials of today’s clothing but also for the flexible needs of the future.

For runners, no matter amateur, intermediate or professional athletes, the project Stryde brings great news to you. By incorporating sensors and auditory devices, Stryde offers low-cost, aesthetic and convenient wearables that will analyze landing and movement, as well as help runners maintain a consistent pace. It will ultimately help mobile individuals improve performance, prevent injury and better understand your fitness activities.

Project UVU provides a solution to promote awareness about skin damage from solar rays and ultraviolet radiation within the Australian context. UVU aims to tackle this through focusing on the education surrounding ultraviolet radiation and skin cancer. The initial concept is the UVU snap band, this band will sense the current UV level and the wearers’ exposure and convey this to the user. This is in the aim of highlighting the time it takes for damage to be caused, to encourage sun safety practice and focus on ingraining habitual habits.

Project Shensuo is an adaptive skirt which aids in mobility via onboard temperature regulation. Measuring via humidity and temperature sensors the Shensuo can find the user’s desired comfortability range and adjust itself to help to moderate insulation. The wearable also addresses day to night aesthetic requirements, adaptive to the rapidly changing environment and social requirements of the cosmopolitan target market – the wearable may use a time sensor to adapt to evening wear (e.g.past 7 pm) or a manual plate trigger.

Join us

at the HIF Cloud Meetup to learn more about these cool projects!

Event Time: 19:30-21:30, Dec 13th (Thursday), 2018
Event Location: Chaihuo x.factory

Related News

The University of New South Wales’s 4th HIF Cloud Workshop revisits eSUN Yisheng

WEARABLE PROJECTS FROM HIF CLOUD WORKSHOP PRESENTED AT CHAIHUO X.FACTORY

FUTUREself Exhibition of Wearable Prototypes

Exhibition Dates

Hong Kong: 9 December 2017
Unit 3305, 33/F AIA Kowloon Tower, Landmark East, Kwun Tong, Kowloon Hong Kong

Australia: 6-10th March 2018
Cnr Greens Rd and Oxford St, Paddington, NSW Australia

About the Exhibition

What’s the future got in store for us? Wearable technology, interactive media and smart textiles created by UNSW artists, designers, scientists and engineers will be on show for Sydney Design Festival.

Listen to audio interview – A Brave New World – The Future Of Wearable Technologies

Design is in discourse with contemporary issues in this outside-the-box approach to designing our future. From critical and speculative to functionally focused prototypes, the exhibition presents design thinking that grapples themes like sustainability, biodiversity, technogenesis and self-sustaining energy systems for life off the grid. Mass markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (Google glass and motion sensors) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. The absorption of technology into the very fabric of clothes, accessories and even bodies begins to dilute boundaries between physical, technological and social spheres and has potential implications for human evolution.

You will see a speculative automatic defence mechanism that alerts users of dangerous levels of pollution. The prototype utilises pollution sensors and motors to raise a functional smog mask around the wearer. Another mask acts as a filtration system for a visually saturated landscape. It is framed as a reclamation of public spaces, that have been taken from the public through excessive advertisements, sponsorships, and logos.

At the opening you can also see a demonstration of the interactive interface “Happy Brackets” or register to take a guided walk in one of Sydney’s urban rewilded environments wearing a cyborganic aid for empathetic experience of insects.

About the Artists

The HIF Cloud 2017 Workshop – wearables workshop ran in Sydney, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangdong and Hong Kong during summer 2017 and brought together varied disciplines – textiles, computer science, intermedia design, product design, SPI (sculpture/performance/installation), jewellery, bioengineering with an interest in exploring critical and speculative wearables to imagine the future self through art or design practice.

It challenged students in an inter-disciplinary, inter-national and inter-cultural collaboration to envision the future of wearables. The projects cast future scenarios for wearables that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich and transcend human interactions in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Projects

Origarment

CLIVE CHAN, ROBERT SLOAN, SIVAAN WALKER, ISABELLA WORSLEY, NEELAM GOPALANI

Origarment began as an exploration of multi-functional design concepts that could challenge the existing fast-fashion industry. The project was eventually realised as a transformable garment with shifting patterns that can be altered digitally. The garment is designed to seamlessly integrate into everyday life, and implements wireless charging technology to allow for effortless overnight charging while hanging in the wardrobe. Adaptive garments like this, that have the ability to modify their shape and pattern on demand will improve reuse and sustainability of the future fashion industry.

Techno Adaption

DEANNA WAWN, AMELIA LIU, ROSE ELLIOT, LAURA KEOGH, MAJA SIECZKO

Techno Adaptation considers the way that humankind will technologically adapt following the rise of pollution levels. Darwin’s theory of evolution no longer adheres to the biological form, as the time frames of adaptation shorten, humans have been unable to keep up with the rapidly changing environment around them. Technological intervention has become necessary for survival, the body and the computer have merged and developed into automatic defence mechanisms. Techno Adaptation presents a scarf that senses the pollution levels of the air around it, and is automatically raised when levels no longer become safe for the user. A heart rate sensor continually monitors and the users body, within higher pollution levels the lights present as warning signals to surrounding users.

Future Primal

JARED GRIFFITHS, HARRY EGGINGTON, MITCHELL SHELTON, AMY MALEK, JACK PARKER

Future Primal is a blending of high-fashion and reactionary deimatic behaviours. The piece questions whether animalistic instincts that humans have long lost could augment our ability to build relationships in a modern society.

Cocoon

MONISHA CHIPPADA, MARLENE BAQUIRAN, MICHAEL NGUYEN HUYNH, LEILA FRIJAT, KRISTONE CAPISTRANO

The Cocoon is a playful speculative tool for navigating our media heavy landscape. Combining easily accessible technology with experimental fashion, the headpiece is a challenge for individuals of society to reject the countless logos and advertisements that confront us in day to day life. A miniature display inside the headpiece is linked to a small camera that sits on the front. When users direct their gaze to logos, software that has been trained to detect such images automatically blurs them. This process works as a deconstruction of censorship, toying with the idea of the ‘forbidden’ to address the current state of visual hierarchy in the public space. The cocoon instead hopes to give attention back to people, nature and the power of our immediate environments.

Wanderer

ELIZABETH READ, JAY RICKARDS, RUTH SAVEKA, ANGELO YAN

Wearable technology is becoming a big part of our lives with the development of “smart” devic- es such as smart phones and smart watches. These devices provide many benefits and are so useful that we have reached a point where we are dependent on them. Unfortunately, these devices are battery powered and need to be regularly charged. As a consequence, society has become limited by the availability of power sockets and charging cables.

Haptic Wanderer aims to remove our reliance on charging by harnessing the kinetic energy we produce while walking and running, thus taking society “off the grid”. This gives us the ability to produce the electricity we consume so that we become self-sufficient allowing us to get in touch with our ancestors who lived off the land and produced everything they consumed.

Cyborganic

Press

Futuristic fashion: UNSW students design the new wave of wearables

The anti-smog scarf: Creating the wearable tech of the future

The 3rd HIF Cloud Workshop 2017 explores the theme FUTUREself.

It challenges students in an inter-disciplinary, inter-national and inter-cultural collaboration to envision the future of wearables. The projects will cast future scenarios for wearables that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich and transcend human interactions in the Asia-Pacific region.

The future of wearable technology is here…

Mass markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (Google glass and motion sensors) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment.

By enabling the connection of divergent data sets, wearables provide life-augmenting levels of interactivity that could benefit and enrich the ways that we understand individual and community wellbeing. The absorption of technology into the very fabric of clothes, accessories and even bodies begins to dilute boundaries between physical, technological and social spheres and has potential implications for human evolution.

The workshop provides a platform for broader debate around wearable technology, our mediated future selves and human interactions in this future landscape.

4-day intensive preparation workshop + 20 day international immersive mobility experience

4-day intensive preparation course June 27-29 and 8th Sep.

The China mobility experience begins in Hong Kong with a series of workshops with students from partner universities Hong Kong Polytechnic University, City University of Hong Kong and Queensland University of Technology.

Then we spend a week in Beijing visiting Galleries and individual artist’s studios, learning Mandarin and creating prototype wearables at Makercollider Beijing.

Then we head south to work with master craftspeople in Nanhai rattan weaving village in Guangdong Province, visit Dafen artists’ village in Shenzhen, and visit 3D print and electronics companies.

We will continue to develop wearable prototypes with the engineers at Esun and Seeedstudios XFactory.

The resulting wearable prototypes will be launched along with student led public workshops.

We return to Hong Kong for the last day of the course.

THIS WORKSHOP HAS FINISHED

Testimonials from this Workshop

We learned a lot about China and I like to think we learned a lot about ourselves, and made connections that will last a lifetime. Jared Griffiths

Hong Kong Felt so vibrant and so alive I don’t think I have ever felt this in Sydney. Being in a completely different environment felt strangely ’usual’ even though some of it was hard to stomach at times crazy had become pretty normal. With so many incredibly talented people I only got to take a glance into their lives, I only wish I could have met them individually and personally. The outcome of their dedication and skills inspired me to work harder and to achieve more.
Robert Sloan

Our first impressions of Hong Kong was fraught with a prevalent feeling of claustrophobia, but also an invigorating liveliness. A million miniature stories happening at once.
Marleen Baquiran

Beijing was very different to Hong Kong. The Sheer scale of the city completely blew me away. This was such an amazing experience to be a part of. I’ve learnt so much and made so many new friends. I am exceptionally proud of my group and our project. Working in this part of Asia really opened my eyes and broadened my horizons. I cannot wait to apply some new ideas and teachings to my design practice. Thank you.
Isabella Worsley

I don’t think I could have ever anticipated how I felt once I landed in Hong Kong. Being present in a world which is this weird mix of similarity but is also entirely different at the same time. You find yourself questioning the perceptions you have about these places, assessing how unaligned they are with reality and also challenging from where you get these ideas about these places. Looking back, I found that working on our projects and collaborating with local students let us experience China in a less touristy and superficial way. We had the privilege of hearing about the way that these students thought.
Leila Frijat

A fresh pair of eyes and collaboration are always constructive.
Monisha Chippada

This was my first time overseas so it was a really good opportunity for me, and while we did have the opportunity to visit cultural heritage sites like the Great Wall of china and the forbidden city I kind of found my most significant cultural exchange moments being within the everydayness of travelling, of trying to find my way through the city, and finding food, and being able to see the daily rituals and values that people have there. Like seeing elder citizens in the city practicing ti chi in groups in the morning. Overall it was really great opportunity to be able to go overseas and work on this project in a really fast paced environment and to be able to readjust my skills set for what was needed at the time.
Maja Sieczko

This was my first trip overseas and my cultural experience was amazing, I met so many great locals and explored some truly amazing places. I really left my comfort zone, eating new different things everyday – trying to communicate with the locals and even normal everyday things like trying to cross the road when everyone drives like crazy. Overall this was one of the most enjoyable things I have done in my life and I can’t wait to go back to China in the future.
Mitchelle Shelton

I created the Lovely Deadly brand with the premise of utilising high quality natural fabric with feminine silhouettes to deliver both innovative yet classic designs. The HIF cloud workshop granted me the ability to challenge the critical design process in my medium of textiles, with our exploration into the Chinese design and textile industry proving invaluable in the formation of my practice’s foundation. The collaborative environment of the HIF cloud workshop as well as the abundance of professional mentoring throughout proved the experience as one both culturally and intellectually enlightening.
Jay Rickard

The Great Wall was more incredible than I imagined. The wall followed the curves of the mountaintops. It was an amazing feeling to walk on a structure that was built thousands of years ago.
I have never seen electronics production so this was a real eye opener. The X factory studio tour was a dream come true, all the resources for prototyping you could imagine, all in one place. It was great to meet the other makers working in this space. Artists from all over the world come to work in the X Factory Space.
Laura Keogh

The rich cultural history surrounding the forbidden city was surreal. To think I was walking on the very pavement where once a whole Empire existed. The Great Wall of China. Something spiritual was happening that I did not quite understand. I often wonder if my ancestors had journey that way before, like Mongolia? I know men Asia Pacific had come to Torres Strait to follow the pearling industry and had since influenced the entire Torres Strait with their language, religion, family and cuisine. Some had stayed and died in the Torres Strait without returning to their homeland.
Ruth Saveka

We took inspiration from the local weaving village, foundry and the local painting village which really blew our minds in terms of what is possible in china and what’s possible in the world and exactly how much we are consuming as a global community. Some of the important learnings from our project included the important interplay between design and technology and how collaboration and working simultaneously throughout the design process is important for its final success.
Neelam Gopalani

I have only stayed in the central area of Hong Kong from previous visits and got to discover the great architects and the bustling vibe that Hong Kong is known for. But on this trip, I got to see to so much more, from different HK universities, to walking down temple street and ladies market, going to Shan Shui Po for material shopping and found an incredible fabric market under a massive tent. I got to experience Hong Kong on a much deeper level in terms of understanding it’s traditions more through daily interaction with local citizens. Language class in the morning was a fun time for me hearing everyone speaking my first language. This trip has made me appreciate my ability to speak Chinese so much more than before, as I was able to help everyone to get around in China.
Amelia Liu

Shenzhen was really amazing, we got to see the metal foundry, which I thought was amazing, I think everyone forgets that these things are made by hand still. So that was a really cool thing to see, so I enjoyed that a lot. We also got to see XFactory and eSun and Seeed so we got to learn how things are made there, and I had a really good time getting to see how things are made in China. The date that we had on the 8th September, when we had to all sit down and think about our values, that day really prompted us to think about what we are going to do and why we are doing it and we had a really strong connection after that. So thanks Tricia, for doing that cause that was really helpful for our team, I think if it wasn’t for that day where we all assessed our values and what we had been doing so far we would have been a lot more lost. So thanks Tricia I really enjoyed the trip.
Sivaan Walker

The inaugural Cloud Workshop challenged students from Industrial Design, Product Design, Fashion, Interaction & Visual Design and Visual Arts from the Asia-Pacific region to envision the future of wearable technology for the well being of users. Projects cast future scenarios for wearable technologies that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich connections between citizens of Australia and Hong Kong.

This exhibition showcased a selection of prototypes from the student outcomes. They represent exciting visions for wearable devices that connect and enrich citizen life between Australia and Hong Kong.

Projects

Emotional

Tether

Collide

Altostratus

The future of wearable technology is here. Mass markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable devices.

Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. By enabling the connection of divergent data sets, wearables provide life-augmenting levels of interactivity that could benefit and enrich the ways that we understand individual and community wellbeing.

The inaugural Cloud Workshop challenges a selection of art and design students from the Asia-Pacific region to envision the future of wearable technology for the well-being of users. Projects will cast future scenarios for wearable technologies that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich connections between citizens of Australia and Hong Kong.

Details

The project will be run as a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural activity consisting of Industrial and Product Design, Visual Arts, Interaction and Visual Design and Fashion Design students working in collaborative teams of 3-4 consisting of students from each institution.

Students will attend an intensive 6.5 day workshop led by the project coordinators. In the first two days students will be presented with theory and information relevant to the workshop theme and then they will have 2 weeks to collaborate, design and prototype future visions of wearable technologies that will answer the brief provided. They will be provided guidance by professional experts in various fields including design, arts, fashion, digital technologies and industry.

To conclude, an exhibition will be held at both locations simultaneously to present the cutting-edge ideas and showcase the work to the community.

HIF Cloud workshop is brought to you by the AVA Wearables Lab, Hong Kong Baptist University in partnership with School of Design, Queensland University of Technology and Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. It is an undergraduate version of the Haptic InterFace workshop.

The inaugural Cloud Workshop challenged 27 students from Industrial Design, Product Design, Fashion, Interaction & Visual Design and Visual Arts from the Asia-Pacific region to envision the future of wearable technology for the well being of users. Projects cast future scenarios for wearable technologies that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich connections between citizens of Australia and Hong Kong.

This exhibition showcased a selection of prototypes from the student outcomes. They represent exciting visions for wearable devices that connect and enrich citizen life between Australia and Hong Kong.

The future of wearable technology is here. Mass markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (Google glass and motion sensors) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. By enabling the connection of divergent data sets, wearables provide life-augmenting levels of interactivity that could benefit and enrich the ways that we understand individual and community wellbeing.

The inaugural Cloud Workshop challenges a selection of art and design students from the Asia-Pacific region to envision the future of wearable technology for the well-being of users. Projects will cast future scenarios for wearable technologies that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich connections between citizens of Australia and Hong Kong.

Details

The project will be run as a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural activity consisting of Industrial and Product Design, Visual Arts, Interaction and Visual Design and Fashion Design students working in collaborative teams of 3-4 consisting of students from each institution.

Students will attend an intensive 6.5 day workshop led by the project coordinators. In the first two days students will be presented with theory and information relevant to the workshop theme and then they will have 2 weeks to collaborate, design and prototype future visions of wearable technologies that will answer the brief provided. They will be provided guidance by professional experts in various fields including design, arts, fashion, digital technologies and industry.

To conclude, an exhibition will be held at both locations simultaneously to present the cutting-edge ideas and showcase the work to the community.

HIF Cloud workshop is brought to you by the AVA Wearables Lab, Hong Kong Baptist University in partnership with School of Design, Queensland University of Technology and Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. It is an undergraduate version of the Haptic InterFace workshop.

Process

DAY 1: THEORY

A day full of introductions, hello’s, finger sandwiches, coffee and skype… lots and lots of skype… Nonetheless a day full of fun, laughs and expectations. The staff led students through the project outline, brief, activities and finally some lectures to inspire and trigger discussion, thoughts and ideas for students in Australia and Hong Kong. Looking forward to day two…

DAY 2: INDUCTIONS, TECH TALKS AND RESEARCH

Day 2 saw students from QUT and QCA getting introduced to the Fabrication Lab at The Edge. HKBU students were presented with technology available at Seeed Studios, one of the project partners. Overall, students began to slowly conceptualise, envision and explore ideas about what they can achieve with their wearable design and art pieces.

DAY 3: MORE AND MORE TECHNOLOGY…

Hong Kong students continued advancing their technology skillsets and began to generate wearable propositions based on the project theme. Australian students were captivated by the possibilities (and limitations) of working with wearable technologies.

DAY 4: DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

Day 4 saw the beginning of the students forming inter-disciplinary groups across the three institutions. It was not always smooth sailing, but that is the nature of culturally and disciplinary diverse groups; all part of the learning and experimentation. Students began to develop concepts and ideas that brought the theme of the project together into physical manifestations.

DAY 6: CONCEPT PRESENTATIONS

Day 6 was hectic with multidisciplinary groups consisting of Hong Kong and Australian students presenting their work to the team. Five groups presented their proposals ranging from satellite dishes and gloves that spell out words in other languages through to dance enhancing costumes and emotion-sensitive jewellery. A good day!

DAY 7: IDEA GENERATION

As the second week started to roll on, student teams began to construct their prototypes. The designs and ideas were starting to take shape and words like ‘soldering’ and ‘cross-stitch’ were starting to be used regularly. The long hours students were putting in clearly reflected the significant effort and energy they were investing in the development of their ideas and concepts.

DAY 8: CUTTING, SEWING AND CODING

Day 8 saw students continuing to develop their designs using their newly-found skills and knowledge. They continued to develop and evolve their concepts through physical manifestations and prototyping.

Resources

PROJECT NOTES

General Cloud Workshop Introduction + Expectations

Hong Kong Students Course Outline Document

Hong Kong Students Assessment Document

Griffith QCA Students Course Outline Document

LECTURE SERIES

Lecture 1 Dr Tricia Flanagan

Lecture 2 Dr Rafael Gomez

Lecture 3 Beck Davis

2029: Fashion Futurism

SCHEDULES

Hong Kong Full Schedule

Australia Full Schedule

EXTERNAL LINKS

Wearable Devices

Smart Contact Lens: Google + Novartis

The Human Cloud: Wearable Technology from Novelty to Production

TED Wearable Tech Talks

School of Visual Arts: Master of Fine Arts Projects

Future of Wearable Tech Slideshow

NMC Horizon Report: What is Wearable Technology

Intel: Make It Wearable

Adafruit

Mashable Wearable Technology

CNET Wearable Tech

Wearable Technologies

Wearable Tech News

Samsung Wearables

Medical Design Technology

As our societies are increasingly reliant on technology, what becomes obvious is the unique contribution that corporeal experience plays in creativity, and creativity plays in research. Scholarship in art creation is equal to that in scientific research. Art creation in some cases may also be the result of research.

Exploring the borders in art, science and technology, the International Conference on Research Creativity: Praxis seeks to define this relationship beyond human geography. Networks that are sites of research and practices embedded in a larger context are often cross-connected with social movements of locally and globally networked societies.

Following the success of AVA’s inaugural conference ‘Opportunities and Challenges – Visual Arts Education in Asia’ in 2009, this year we bring some of the world’s leading creative thinkers together in Hong Kong to delve deeper into the notion of Praxis. How can we avoid falling into the trap of being pragmatic when undertaking research, so that poetics are nourished and supported rather than stifled by the need to articulate/publish, so that entrenched research paradigms do not stifle new modes of research that can be supported to emerge from artistic fields? Creative research adopts the language of the times, modeled upon the digital networks and the electronic circuitry of our age, rather than the mechanical factories designed in the industrial age.

We have the ability to use the affordances of the body to explore post-modernity’s alternative geographies. International Conference on Research Creativity – Praxis is about mapping this new terrain for research.

Program

Spend six intensive hours developing new ideas in relation to the body through the creative use of materials and praxis. Our aim is to provide a space where professionals and creative thinkers from a range of backgrounds explore the borders between art, science and technology.

This is a participant-driven workshop where you will be encouraged to collaborate, mash-up materials and technology and find ways to let innovation happen in real-time. Get an insight into the latest innovations in open source hardware gadgets and technologies and hi-tech Merino wool products from the workshop sponsors Seeed Studios and The Woolmark company. Then get your hands and imaginations to work guided by expert facilitators as they fast track the creative process through a Rapid Prototyping workshop using low-tech body storming techniques.

Participants will learn 3D pattern modeling for complex organic shapes as well as basic Seeedunio programming. Seeed Studios design modular electronics for quick prototyping and small scale projects. They also carry inventories from community innovators, and help people make, distribute their designs and collect the revenue.

Haptic InterFace Exhibition 2012 took place from November 21st – December 16th at the Koo Ming Kown Exhibition Gallery, Hong Kong. It featured art/design/multi-media work in the form of body related works from leading artists and designers around the world. Concepts/prototypes developed in the Wearables Lab were added to the core exhibition at the end of a 10-day intensive workshop.

HIF 2012 Participating Artists

Celina ALVARADO, Kristina ANDERSEN, Raymond AU, Sabrina BASTEN, Martin BELLARDI, Margarita BENITEZ, Dean BOUGH, Priscilla BRACKS, Katia CANEPA-VEGA, CHONG Wai, Meiyi CHEUNG, Bryan CHUNG, Anne-Christin DELAKOWITZ, Jared DONOVAN, Tricia FLANAGAN, Daniel GILGEN, Seraphine GUTEKUNST, Raune FRANKJAER, Hugo FUKS, Anne GRAHAM, Karyn HENSON, HO Siu Kee, Jonathan JAMES, Clare JOHNSTON, Freeman LAU, Kanta KOCHHAR-LINGDREN, LAM Chi-hin Jin, Dawn-Joy LEONG, LEUNG Mee Ping, Roger NG, Katherine OLSTON, Hector RODRIGUEZ, Gavin SADE, Audrey SAMSON, Elizabeth SHAW, Zoie SO, Markus VOGL, Danielle WILDE, Fionna WOODS

Opening hours : 9:30 – 4:30 weekdays

In November 2012 a group of professionals and creative thinkers from diverse backgrounds and cultures came together for ten-intensive-day’s in the Wearables Lab to explore the interactions of art, science and technology under the theme Haptic InterFace. The Wearables Lab, an innovative trans-disciplinary laboratory within the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University in Hong Kong, is equipped with state of the art technology and facilitated by a team of experts and support staff. The experimental prototypes developed in HIF 2012 will be on show in Australia for the first time for VIVID ideas.

Imagine shoes that enable you to have a physical awareness of another person walking. Sensors on the bottom of the shoes communicate via microcontrollers through smartphones to actuators on the top of another pair of shoes. When one person sits to rest, the other will feel the weight lift. When one runs, the other will feel increased pressure and faster rhythm. People wearing the prototype shoes and strangely sensing each others activity are currently walking around Trier, Germany, and Brisbane, Australia.

A set of wicker hats, reminiscent in shape to elongated Victorian bonnets, take the sound waves from the voice of the wearer and amplify them into kinetic energy in the other’s bonnet. One person experiences the voice of the other visually, through the movement of the brim above her eyes, and aurally through the chattering noise that the movement creates in the bamboo reeds from which the hat is constructed. The hat vibrates causing the brim sticks to chatter, in this way the voice is translated into a kind of whisper. Each hat responds to the other, engaging the wearers in an immersive, interactive, haptic, audio-visual experience.

A wearable pillow that surrounds the head alerts the wearer if he/she begins to snore. Based on a skivvy design around the neck, which holds the sensors in place, an Arduino single-board microcontroller and vibrator are embedded inside a padded sculpted hood, shaped like an egg laid on its side, the fully felted headpiece has the appearance of a surrealist sculpture, and the white felt fabric metaphorically evokes a cloud, an apt reference for dreaming and sleep.

By wearing specially designed white cuffs with ostrich feather plumage highlighted by a diffused pulsating red light, two people can sense each other’s presence even when they are out of visible range. The prototype cuffs read the pulse of one person and send it as vibration to another cuff. The production of many cuffs and their trial with larger groups will
enable interesting exploration of “swarm behavior.”

‘Blinklifier’, (pictured above) a wearable computer that amplifies voluntary and involuntary eyelid movement and powers a visible light array, uses bio-data directly to interact with the computer. Although the head-dress can be consciously controlled, this fashion artifact is designed to avoid conscious interaction and instead directly amplify the body’s expression. Blinklifier doesn’t look like a computer; its electronic components are nearly invisible. Attached to metalized fake eyelashes are lines of skin conductive ink. An Arduino microcontroller translates the eyelashes’ blinking movements into signals to light up the LEDs embedded in the large headdress. Facial expressions are complex but easily recognized and naturally understood. By their amplification through bodily worn devices, something usually overlooked in everyday life can become a rich source of knowledge, or open potential for new ways of communicating our emotions and of understanding others.

HIF participants: Celina Alvarado New York/Madrid; Sabrina Basten; Priscilla Bracks Brisbane Australia; Dean Brough Brisbane Australia; Raune Frankjaer Trier Germany; Dawn-Joy Leong Sydney Australia; Sandra Coelho Portugal; Katia Canepa-Vega Lima Peru; Meiyi Cheung Hong Kong SAR China; Jared Donovan Brisbane Australia; Tricia Flanagan Hong Kong/Australia; Geoph Frey Zurich Switzerland; Hugo Fuks Rio de Janeiro Brazil; Daniel Gilgen Trier Germany; Anne Graham Sydney Australia; Seraphine Gutekunst Hong Kong/ Switzerland; Karyn Henderson Wellington New Zealand; Jonathan James Newcastle Australia; Gavin Sade Brisbane Australia; Elizabeth Shaw Brisbane Australia.

Haptic InterFace Exhibition 2014 will take place from 3rd – 19th December at the Koo Ming Kown Exhibition Gallery, Hong Kong. It featured art/design/multi-media work in the form of body related works from leading artists/ designers/ scientists around the world.

The focus of 2014 exhibition is HIF Designing Experience.

In addition to the core exhibition a pop-up exhibition of concepts/prototypes developed in the Wearables Lab will be exhibited as a at the end of the 10-day intensive workshop. A public sympossium will take place, an opportunity to meet the 20 HIF workshop participants and get a global insite into latest exploritory research in the field.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

Haptic Interface 2014 – Designing Experience combines our current reality, our imagined future and our unimagined future with Fuller’s challenge by bringing together professionals and creative thinkers from different disciplines and cultures to explore the borders between art, science and technology in an innovative trans-disciplinary exhibition of new ideas in relation to the body through the creative use of materials and praxis.

Works in this exhibition consider an intermediary zone; not clearly part of the body (the intimate-self) or of the public (the communal-self) it can be viewed as a space of depth rather than surface.
The affordances of the body may undermine and even revise existing practices of embodiment and lead to new processes for navigating the alternative geographies of post-modernity.

Technology is increasingly becoming smaller and more powerful and access to data, faster and more portable, while scientific discoveries are revealing more about how our mind and bodies work. The resulting interconnected world of objects, beings and spaces is the environment we currently inhabit. It is within the intersecting nodes and spaces of accelerated change, through intelligence, imagination and innovation that we must imagine and design ethical and sustainable future(s) in which we want to live.

HIF 2014 Participating Artists

Sara ADHITYA, Isaac CHONG, Meiyi CHEUNG, Bryan CHUNG, Emma COOPER, Beck DAVIS, Jared DONOVAN, David EBNER, Tricia FLANAGAN, Raune FRANKJAER, Daniel GILGEN, Rafael GOMEZ, Dave HRYNKIW, HO Siu Kee, Ceci HO Sze Lo, Kinor JIANG, Erina KASHIHARA, Tobias KLEIN, Joey LAI, Miu Ling LAM, Daniel LAU Chak Kwong, Kosa LAW, Zoe MAHONY, Hofi MAN, Kit MESSHAM-MUIR, Jana MOERMANN, Ann MORRISON, Kingsley NG, Louis NG, Roger NG, Jake OLIVER-FISHMAN, Elizabeth SHAW, Michaela SWAN, Poly TAM, Anne WIEDAU, Musey XU, Tobias ZIMMER

This invitation represents an opportunity to spend six intensive hours developing new ideas in relation to the body through the creative use of materials and praxis. Our aim is to provide a space where professionals and creative thinkers from a range of backgrounds explore the borders between art, science and technology.

This is a participant-driven workshop where you will be encouraged to collaborate, mash-up materials and technology and find ways to let innovation happen in real-time. Get an insight into the latest innovations in open source hardware gadgets and technologies and hi-tech Merino wool products from the workshop sponsors Seeed Studios and The Woolmark company. Then get your hands and imaginations to work guided by expert facilitators Dr. Sade and Dr. Flanagan as they fast track the creative process through a Rapid Prototyping workshop using low-tech body storming techniques. Participants will learn 3D pattern modeling for complex organic shapes as well as basic Seeedunio programming. Seeed Studios design modular electronics for quick prototyping and small scale projects. They also carry inventories from community innovators, and help people make, distribute their designs and collect the revenue.

For user interfaces to become genuinely intelligent interactive systems, we must enable the development of interactive systems that can recognize unpredictable state changes, such as emotion, intention, desire, empathy, etc. User interfaces of the future will acknowledge the relationship between people, places and things as emergent spaces that generate meaning through everyday activity and therefore one in which users themselves act as co-designers. As we develop more intelligent technologies what is revealed is how little we understand of the complexity that makes up our own human form. By adopting an approach in which objects mediate human beings and human beings mediate objects we can acknowledge an alternative to the predominant separation of humans and things. The challenge is to fashion a future that is not based on predicting utopian visions but one that is responsive to changing conditions and acknowledges both mind and body.

Please BYO laptop computers to this workshop.

Please use the form to register your interest.

Haptic InterFace workshop will take place from 1st to 10th December 2014 in the Wearables Lab, an innovative trans-disciplinary laboratory at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. This invitation represents an opportunity to spend ten intensive days developing new ideas in relation to the body through the creative use of materials and praxis. Our aim is to provide a space where professionals and creative thinkers from a range of backgrounds explore the borders between art, science and technology.

This is a participant-driven workshop where you will be encouraged to collaborate, mashup materials and technology and find ways to let innovation happen in real-time, facilitated by a team of experts and support staff. The lab is equipped with state of the art technology, and depending on your research area, can draw on specific equipment available from the broad range of creative studios at the Academy of Visual Arts and partner institutions in order to support your creative investigations.

See how you can participate in the 2014 Haptic InterFace workshop in Hong Kong.

How to Apply

As there are a limited number of places available to the workshop and exhibition, selection is based on quality of previous work and creative capacity to contribution to the overall group.

These are the ways you could participate in Haptic InterFace 2014:

• Participate in the 10-day workshop PLUS submit an art/design work to be considered for inclusion in the exhibition.
• Participate in the 10-day workshop only.
• Submit an art/design work to be considered for inclusion in the exhibition only.

Please use the form to register your interest.

Making Mobilities

Pop-Up Prototype Launch

Date: Friday 14^th Dec
Time: 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Address: Woolmark Resource Centre, Unit 3305, 33/F, AIA Kowloon Tower, Landmark East, 100 How Ming Street, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong.

About

Image Credit: Maja Sieczko

Come and join a group of Australian artists and designers at the end of a three week journey across China, working with maker spaces and industry partners to design speculative and critical Wearable prototypes that are making our future mobile. Prototype presentations followed by drinks and nibbles (free admission).

Wearable technology is an exponentially growing sector. Markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (sensor and actuator) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. We live within the Internet of Things and Smart Cities are becoming reality.

No longer are we tethered to our tech through power cables, wearable technology enables freedom of movement. Technology is embedded in our bodies and the very fabric of clothes, augmenting our bodies, enabling mobility. The mobilities paradigm is reframing our future.

The Prototypes

SOLAR

SOLAR is a solar powered jacket, built not only for the flexible materials of today’s clothing but for the flexible needs of tomorrows future. By energizing our clothing, we can energize ourselves, pushing ourselves to be more mobile and able to adapt to the elements around us. We believe a long-distance hiking jacket is the best method by which to demonstrate the flourishing relationship of technology and fashion and it’s benefits to humanity. This design can target both hiking enthusiasts and be inviting enough to involve even those outside that community through a human and natural minimalist design.
Visit Solar Instructables Page

STRYDE

STRYDE gives amateur and intermediate runners the same insights available to professional athletes with low-cost, aesthetic and convenient wearables. Working on a pair of tights incorporating sensors to analyse landing and movement, as well as an auditory device to help runners maintain a consistent pace. The compression running tights communicate sensor readings back to a PC or mobile where a model for comparison can be used to provide feedback about what aspects of the runner’s stride may be improved. Ultimately these wearables aim to help mobile individuals improve performance, prevent injury and better understand their fitness activities.
Visit Stryde Instructables Page

UVU

UVU (ultra violet you) aims to promote awareness about skin damage from solar rays and ultra violet radiation within the Australian context. The Australian summer on average has one of the highest UV indexes, regularly reaching an intensity of 9.5, that can cause permeant damage to skin cells within 15 minutes. UVU aims to tackle this through focusing on the education surrounding ultra violet radiation and skin cancer. The initial concept is the UVU snap band, this band will sense the current UV level and the wearers exposure and convey this to the user. This is in the aim of highlighting the time it takes for damage to be caused, to encourage sun safety practice and focus on ingraining habitual habits.
Visit UVU Instructables Page

SHENSUO

SHENSUO is an adaptive skirt which aids in mobility via on board temperature regulation. Measuring via humidity and temperature sensors the Shensuo can find the user’s desired comfortability range and adjust itself to help to moderate insulation. The pleated skirt is composed of two elements, one opaque and one sheer panel. Once triggered the motors will adjust the angle of the pleated panels to expose the sheer side of the pleated (when adjusting to cool) and the opaque element (when adjusting to warmth). Day to night adaptive design also aids in aesthetic transition allowing for social mobility. The wearable also addresses day to night aesthetic requirements, adaptive to the rapid changing environment and social requirements of cosmopolitan target market – the wearable may use a time sensor to adapt to evening wear (e.g. past 7pm) or a manual plate trigger. This is addressed by an automated cinching function which draws the pleats inward to create a more streamlined fitted evening dress aesthetic.
Visit Shensuo Instructables Page

Event Dates

Sydney: 19 – 21 Sep 2018
China: 26 Nov – 15 Dec 2018

About

UNSW HIF Cloud workshop, organised by the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia, is an international, interdisciplinary hands-on workshop that takes place in Australia and China.

After the event in Sydney in September 2018, it will bring 18 students to 3 cities in China (Beijing, Hong Kong and Shenzhen), where the students will work together in creating wearable projects!

Let’s have a quick look at the projects and the teams!

If you are into hiking, just like us. The Solar project is exactly what you need! This project will be a good example to demonstrate the flourishing relationship between technology and fashion and it’s benefits to humanity. If you are not a hiking enthusiast, this jacket can also be a good way for you to experience human and natural minimalist design. The jacket is built not only for the flexible materials of today’s clothing but also for the flexible needs of the future.

For runners, no matter amateur, intermediate or professional athletes, the project Stryde brings great news to you. By incorporating sensors and auditory devices, Stryde offers low-cost, aesthetic and convenient wearables that will analyze landing and movement, as well as help runners maintain a consistent pace. It will ultimately help mobile individuals improve performance, prevent injury and better understand your fitness activities.

Project UVU provides a solution to promote awareness about skin damage from solar rays and ultraviolet radiation within the Australian context. UVU aims to tackle this through focusing on the education surrounding ultraviolet radiation and skin cancer. The initial concept is the UVU snap band, this band will sense the current UV level and the wearers’ exposure and convey this to the user. This is in the aim of highlighting the time it takes for damage to be caused, to encourage sun safety practice and focus on ingraining habitual habits.

Project Shensuo is an adaptive skirt which aids in mobility via onboard temperature regulation. Measuring via humidity and temperature sensors the Shensuo can find the user’s desired comfortability range and adjust itself to help to moderate insulation. The wearable also addresses day to night aesthetic requirements, adaptive to the rapidly changing environment and social requirements of the cosmopolitan target market – the wearable may use a time sensor to adapt to evening wear (e.g.past 7 pm) or a manual plate trigger.

Join us

at the HIF Cloud Meetup to learn more about these cool projects!

Event Time: 19:30-21:30, Dec 13th (Thursday), 2018
Event Location: Chaihuo x.factory

Related News

The University of New South Wales’s 4th HIF Cloud Workshop revisits eSUN Yisheng

WEARABLE PROJECTS FROM HIF CLOUD WORKSHOP PRESENTED AT CHAIHUO X.FACTORY

FUTUREself Exhibition of Wearable Prototypes

Exhibition Dates

Hong Kong: 9 December 2017
Unit 3305, 33/F AIA Kowloon Tower, Landmark East, Kwun Tong, Kowloon Hong Kong

Australia: 6-10th March 2018
Cnr Greens Rd and Oxford St, Paddington, NSW Australia

About the Exhibition

What’s the future got in store for us? Wearable technology, interactive media and smart textiles created by UNSW artists, designers, scientists and engineers will be on show for Sydney Design Festival.

Listen to audio interview – A Brave New World – The Future Of Wearable Technologies

Design is in discourse with contemporary issues in this outside-the-box approach to designing our future. From critical and speculative to functionally focused prototypes, the exhibition presents design thinking that grapples themes like sustainability, biodiversity, technogenesis and self-sustaining energy systems for life off the grid. Mass markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (Google glass and motion sensors) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. The absorption of technology into the very fabric of clothes, accessories and even bodies begins to dilute boundaries between physical, technological and social spheres and has potential implications for human evolution.

You will see a speculative automatic defence mechanism that alerts users of dangerous levels of pollution. The prototype utilises pollution sensors and motors to raise a functional smog mask around the wearer. Another mask acts as a filtration system for a visually saturated landscape. It is framed as a reclamation of public spaces, that have been taken from the public through excessive advertisements, sponsorships, and logos.

At the opening you can also see a demonstration of the interactive interface “Happy Brackets” or register to take a guided walk in one of Sydney’s urban rewilded environments wearing a cyborganic aid for empathetic experience of insects.

About the Artists

The HIF Cloud 2017 Workshop – wearables workshop ran in Sydney, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangdong and Hong Kong during summer 2017 and brought together varied disciplines – textiles, computer science, intermedia design, product design, SPI (sculpture/performance/installation), jewellery, bioengineering with an interest in exploring critical and speculative wearables to imagine the future self through art or design practice.

It challenged students in an inter-disciplinary, inter-national and inter-cultural collaboration to envision the future of wearables. The projects cast future scenarios for wearables that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich and transcend human interactions in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Projects

Origarment

CLIVE CHAN, ROBERT SLOAN, SIVAAN WALKER, ISABELLA WORSLEY, NEELAM GOPALANI

Origarment began as an exploration of multi-functional design concepts that could challenge the existing fast-fashion industry. The project was eventually realised as a transformable garment with shifting patterns that can be altered digitally. The garment is designed to seamlessly integrate into everyday life, and implements wireless charging technology to allow for effortless overnight charging while hanging in the wardrobe. Adaptive garments like this, that have the ability to modify their shape and pattern on demand will improve reuse and sustainability of the future fashion industry.

Techno Adaption

DEANNA WAWN, AMELIA LIU, ROSE ELLIOT, LAURA KEOGH, MAJA SIECZKO

Techno Adaptation considers the way that humankind will technologically adapt following the rise of pollution levels. Darwin’s theory of evolution no longer adheres to the biological form, as the time frames of adaptation shorten, humans have been unable to keep up with the rapidly changing environment around them. Technological intervention has become necessary for survival, the body and the computer have merged and developed into automatic defence mechanisms. Techno Adaptation presents a scarf that senses the pollution levels of the air around it, and is automatically raised when levels no longer become safe for the user. A heart rate sensor continually monitors and the users body, within higher pollution levels the lights present as warning signals to surrounding users.

Future Primal

JARED GRIFFITHS, HARRY EGGINGTON, MITCHELL SHELTON, AMY MALEK, JACK PARKER

Future Primal is a blending of high-fashion and reactionary deimatic behaviours. The piece questions whether animalistic instincts that humans have long lost could augment our ability to build relationships in a modern society.

Cocoon

MONISHA CHIPPADA, MARLENE BAQUIRAN, MICHAEL NGUYEN HUYNH, LEILA FRIJAT, KRISTONE CAPISTRANO

The Cocoon is a playful speculative tool for navigating our media heavy landscape. Combining easily accessible technology with experimental fashion, the headpiece is a challenge for individuals of society to reject the countless logos and advertisements that confront us in day to day life. A miniature display inside the headpiece is linked to a small camera that sits on the front. When users direct their gaze to logos, software that has been trained to detect such images automatically blurs them. This process works as a deconstruction of censorship, toying with the idea of the ‘forbidden’ to address the current state of visual hierarchy in the public space. The cocoon instead hopes to give attention back to people, nature and the power of our immediate environments.

Wanderer

ELIZABETH READ, JAY RICKARDS, RUTH SAVEKA, ANGELO YAN

Wearable technology is becoming a big part of our lives with the development of “smart” devic- es such as smart phones and smart watches. These devices provide many benefits and are so useful that we have reached a point where we are dependent on them. Unfortunately, these devices are battery powered and need to be regularly charged. As a consequence, society has become limited by the availability of power sockets and charging cables.

Haptic Wanderer aims to remove our reliance on charging by harnessing the kinetic energy we produce while walking and running, thus taking society “off the grid”. This gives us the ability to produce the electricity we consume so that we become self-sufficient allowing us to get in touch with our ancestors who lived off the land and produced everything they consumed.

Cyborganic

Press

Futuristic fashion: UNSW students design the new wave of wearables

The anti-smog scarf: Creating the wearable tech of the future

The 3rd HIF Cloud Workshop 2017 explores the theme FUTUREself.

It challenges students in an inter-disciplinary, inter-national and inter-cultural collaboration to envision the future of wearables. The projects will cast future scenarios for wearables that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich and transcend human interactions in the Asia-Pacific region.

The future of wearable technology is here…

Mass markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (Google glass and motion sensors) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment.

By enabling the connection of divergent data sets, wearables provide life-augmenting levels of interactivity that could benefit and enrich the ways that we understand individual and community wellbeing. The absorption of technology into the very fabric of clothes, accessories and even bodies begins to dilute boundaries between physical, technological and social spheres and has potential implications for human evolution.

The workshop provides a platform for broader debate around wearable technology, our mediated future selves and human interactions in this future landscape.

4-day intensive preparation workshop + 20 day international immersive mobility experience

4-day intensive preparation course June 27-29 and 8th Sep.

The China mobility experience begins in Hong Kong with a series of workshops with students from partner universities Hong Kong Polytechnic University, City University of Hong Kong and Queensland University of Technology.

Then we spend a week in Beijing visiting Galleries and individual artist’s studios, learning Mandarin and creating prototype wearables at Makercollider Beijing.

Then we head south to work with master craftspeople in Nanhai rattan weaving village in Guangdong Province, visit Dafen artists’ village in Shenzhen, and visit 3D print and electronics companies.

We will continue to develop wearable prototypes with the engineers at Esun and Seeedstudios XFactory.

The resulting wearable prototypes will be launched along with student led public workshops.

We return to Hong Kong for the last day of the course.

THIS WORKSHOP HAS FINISHED

Testimonials from this Workshop

We learned a lot about China and I like to think we learned a lot about ourselves, and made connections that will last a lifetime. Jared Griffiths

Hong Kong Felt so vibrant and so alive I don’t think I have ever felt this in Sydney. Being in a completely different environment felt strangely ’usual’ even though some of it was hard to stomach at times crazy had become pretty normal. With so many incredibly talented people I only got to take a glance into their lives, I only wish I could have met them individually and personally. The outcome of their dedication and skills inspired me to work harder and to achieve more.
Robert Sloan

Our first impressions of Hong Kong was fraught with a prevalent feeling of claustrophobia, but also an invigorating liveliness. A million miniature stories happening at once.
Marleen Baquiran

Beijing was very different to Hong Kong. The Sheer scale of the city completely blew me away. This was such an amazing experience to be a part of. I’ve learnt so much and made so many new friends. I am exceptionally proud of my group and our project. Working in this part of Asia really opened my eyes and broadened my horizons. I cannot wait to apply some new ideas and teachings to my design practice. Thank you.
Isabella Worsley

I don’t think I could have ever anticipated how I felt once I landed in Hong Kong. Being present in a world which is this weird mix of similarity but is also entirely different at the same time. You find yourself questioning the perceptions you have about these places, assessing how unaligned they are with reality and also challenging from where you get these ideas about these places. Looking back, I found that working on our projects and collaborating with local students let us experience China in a less touristy and superficial way. We had the privilege of hearing about the way that these students thought.
Leila Frijat

A fresh pair of eyes and collaboration are always constructive.
Monisha Chippada

This was my first time overseas so it was a really good opportunity for me, and while we did have the opportunity to visit cultural heritage sites like the Great Wall of china and the forbidden city I kind of found my most significant cultural exchange moments being within the everydayness of travelling, of trying to find my way through the city, and finding food, and being able to see the daily rituals and values that people have there. Like seeing elder citizens in the city practicing ti chi in groups in the morning. Overall it was really great opportunity to be able to go overseas and work on this project in a really fast paced environment and to be able to readjust my skills set for what was needed at the time.
Maja Sieczko

This was my first trip overseas and my cultural experience was amazing, I met so many great locals and explored some truly amazing places. I really left my comfort zone, eating new different things everyday – trying to communicate with the locals and even normal everyday things like trying to cross the road when everyone drives like crazy. Overall this was one of the most enjoyable things I have done in my life and I can’t wait to go back to China in the future.
Mitchelle Shelton

I created the Lovely Deadly brand with the premise of utilising high quality natural fabric with feminine silhouettes to deliver both innovative yet classic designs. The HIF cloud workshop granted me the ability to challenge the critical design process in my medium of textiles, with our exploration into the Chinese design and textile industry proving invaluable in the formation of my practice’s foundation. The collaborative environment of the HIF cloud workshop as well as the abundance of professional mentoring throughout proved the experience as one both culturally and intellectually enlightening.
Jay Rickard

The Great Wall was more incredible than I imagined. The wall followed the curves of the mountaintops. It was an amazing feeling to walk on a structure that was built thousands of years ago.
I have never seen electronics production so this was a real eye opener. The X factory studio tour was a dream come true, all the resources for prototyping you could imagine, all in one place. It was great to meet the other makers working in this space. Artists from all over the world come to work in the X Factory Space.
Laura Keogh

The rich cultural history surrounding the forbidden city was surreal. To think I was walking on the very pavement where once a whole Empire existed. The Great Wall of China. Something spiritual was happening that I did not quite understand. I often wonder if my ancestors had journey that way before, like Mongolia? I know men Asia Pacific had come to Torres Strait to follow the pearling industry and had since influenced the entire Torres Strait with their language, religion, family and cuisine. Some had stayed and died in the Torres Strait without returning to their homeland.
Ruth Saveka

We took inspiration from the local weaving village, foundry and the local painting village which really blew our minds in terms of what is possible in china and what’s possible in the world and exactly how much we are consuming as a global community. Some of the important learnings from our project included the important interplay between design and technology and how collaboration and working simultaneously throughout the design process is important for its final success.
Neelam Gopalani

I have only stayed in the central area of Hong Kong from previous visits and got to discover the great architects and the bustling vibe that Hong Kong is known for. But on this trip, I got to see to so much more, from different HK universities, to walking down temple street and ladies market, going to Shan Shui Po for material shopping and found an incredible fabric market under a massive tent. I got to experience Hong Kong on a much deeper level in terms of understanding it’s traditions more through daily interaction with local citizens. Language class in the morning was a fun time for me hearing everyone speaking my first language. This trip has made me appreciate my ability to speak Chinese so much more than before, as I was able to help everyone to get around in China.
Amelia Liu

Shenzhen was really amazing, we got to see the metal foundry, which I thought was amazing, I think everyone forgets that these things are made by hand still. So that was a really cool thing to see, so I enjoyed that a lot. We also got to see XFactory and eSun and Seeed so we got to learn how things are made there, and I had a really good time getting to see how things are made in China. The date that we had on the 8th September, when we had to all sit down and think about our values, that day really prompted us to think about what we are going to do and why we are doing it and we had a really strong connection after that. So thanks Tricia, for doing that cause that was really helpful for our team, I think if it wasn’t for that day where we all assessed our values and what we had been doing so far we would have been a lot more lost. So thanks Tricia I really enjoyed the trip.
Sivaan Walker

The inaugural Cloud Workshop challenged students from Industrial Design, Product Design, Fashion, Interaction & Visual Design and Visual Arts from the Asia-Pacific region to envision the future of wearable technology for the well being of users. Projects cast future scenarios for wearable technologies that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich connections between citizens of Australia and Hong Kong.

This exhibition showcased a selection of prototypes from the student outcomes. They represent exciting visions for wearable devices that connect and enrich citizen life between Australia and Hong Kong.

Projects

Emotional

Tether

Collide

Altostratus

The future of wearable technology is here. Mass markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable devices.

Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. By enabling the connection of divergent data sets, wearables provide life-augmenting levels of interactivity that could benefit and enrich the ways that we understand individual and community wellbeing.

The inaugural Cloud Workshop challenges a selection of art and design students from the Asia-Pacific region to envision the future of wearable technology for the well-being of users. Projects will cast future scenarios for wearable technologies that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich connections between citizens of Australia and Hong Kong.

Details

The project will be run as a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural activity consisting of Industrial and Product Design, Visual Arts, Interaction and Visual Design and Fashion Design students working in collaborative teams of 3-4 consisting of students from each institution.

Students will attend an intensive 6.5 day workshop led by the project coordinators. In the first two days students will be presented with theory and information relevant to the workshop theme and then they will have 2 weeks to collaborate, design and prototype future visions of wearable technologies that will answer the brief provided. They will be provided guidance by professional experts in various fields including design, arts, fashion, digital technologies and industry.

To conclude, an exhibition will be held at both locations simultaneously to present the cutting-edge ideas and showcase the work to the community.

HIF Cloud workshop is brought to you by the AVA Wearables Lab, Hong Kong Baptist University in partnership with School of Design, Queensland University of Technology and Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. It is an undergraduate version of the Haptic InterFace workshop.

The inaugural Cloud Workshop challenged 27 students from Industrial Design, Product Design, Fashion, Interaction & Visual Design and Visual Arts from the Asia-Pacific region to envision the future of wearable technology for the well being of users. Projects cast future scenarios for wearable technologies that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich connections between citizens of Australia and Hong Kong.

This exhibition showcased a selection of prototypes from the student outcomes. They represent exciting visions for wearable devices that connect and enrich citizen life between Australia and Hong Kong.

The future of wearable technology is here. Mass markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (Google glass and motion sensors) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. By enabling the connection of divergent data sets, wearables provide life-augmenting levels of interactivity that could benefit and enrich the ways that we understand individual and community wellbeing.

The inaugural Cloud Workshop challenges a selection of art and design students from the Asia-Pacific region to envision the future of wearable technology for the well-being of users. Projects will cast future scenarios for wearable technologies that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich connections between citizens of Australia and Hong Kong.

Details

The project will be run as a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural activity consisting of Industrial and Product Design, Visual Arts, Interaction and Visual Design and Fashion Design students working in collaborative teams of 3-4 consisting of students from each institution.

Students will attend an intensive 6.5 day workshop led by the project coordinators. In the first two days students will be presented with theory and information relevant to the workshop theme and then they will have 2 weeks to collaborate, design and prototype future visions of wearable technologies that will answer the brief provided. They will be provided guidance by professional experts in various fields including design, arts, fashion, digital technologies and industry.

To conclude, an exhibition will be held at both locations simultaneously to present the cutting-edge ideas and showcase the work to the community.

HIF Cloud workshop is brought to you by the AVA Wearables Lab, Hong Kong Baptist University in partnership with School of Design, Queensland University of Technology and Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. It is an undergraduate version of the Haptic InterFace workshop.

Process

DAY 1: THEORY

A day full of introductions, hello’s, finger sandwiches, coffee and skype… lots and lots of skype… Nonetheless a day full of fun, laughs and expectations. The staff led students through the project outline, brief, activities and finally some lectures to inspire and trigger discussion, thoughts and ideas for students in Australia and Hong Kong. Looking forward to day two…

DAY 2: INDUCTIONS, TECH TALKS AND RESEARCH

Day 2 saw students from QUT and QCA getting introduced to the Fabrication Lab at The Edge. HKBU students were presented with technology available at Seeed Studios, one of the project partners. Overall, students began to slowly conceptualise, envision and explore ideas about what they can achieve with their wearable design and art pieces.

DAY 3: MORE AND MORE TECHNOLOGY…

Hong Kong students continued advancing their technology skillsets and began to generate wearable propositions based on the project theme. Australian students were captivated by the possibilities (and limitations) of working with wearable technologies.

DAY 4: DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

Day 4 saw the beginning of the students forming inter-disciplinary groups across the three institutions. It was not always smooth sailing, but that is the nature of culturally and disciplinary diverse groups; all part of the learning and experimentation. Students began to develop concepts and ideas that brought the theme of the project together into physical manifestations.

DAY 6: CONCEPT PRESENTATIONS

Day 6 was hectic with multidisciplinary groups consisting of Hong Kong and Australian students presenting their work to the team. Five groups presented their proposals ranging from satellite dishes and gloves that spell out words in other languages through to dance enhancing costumes and emotion-sensitive jewellery. A good day!

DAY 7: IDEA GENERATION

As the second week started to roll on, student teams began to construct their prototypes. The designs and ideas were starting to take shape and words like ‘soldering’ and ‘cross-stitch’ were starting to be used regularly. The long hours students were putting in clearly reflected the significant effort and energy they were investing in the development of their ideas and concepts.

DAY 8: CUTTING, SEWING AND CODING

Day 8 saw students continuing to develop their designs using their newly-found skills and knowledge. They continued to develop and evolve their concepts through physical manifestations and prototyping.

Resources

PROJECT NOTES

General Cloud Workshop Introduction + Expectations

Hong Kong Students Course Outline Document

Hong Kong Students Assessment Document

Griffith QCA Students Course Outline Document

LECTURE SERIES

Lecture 1 Dr Tricia Flanagan

Lecture 2 Dr Rafael Gomez

Lecture 3 Beck Davis

2029: Fashion Futurism

SCHEDULES

Hong Kong Full Schedule

Australia Full Schedule

EXTERNAL LINKS

Wearable Devices

Smart Contact Lens: Google + Novartis

The Human Cloud: Wearable Technology from Novelty to Production

TED Wearable Tech Talks

School of Visual Arts: Master of Fine Arts Projects

Future of Wearable Tech Slideshow

NMC Horizon Report: What is Wearable Technology

Intel: Make It Wearable

Adafruit

Mashable Wearable Technology

CNET Wearable Tech

Wearable Technologies

Wearable Tech News

Samsung Wearables

Medical Design Technology

As our societies are increasingly reliant on technology, what becomes obvious is the unique contribution that corporeal experience plays in creativity, and creativity plays in research. Scholarship in art creation is equal to that in scientific research. Art creation in some cases may also be the result of research.

Exploring the borders in art, science and technology, the International Conference on Research Creativity: Praxis seeks to define this relationship beyond human geography. Networks that are sites of research and practices embedded in a larger context are often cross-connected with social movements of locally and globally networked societies.

Following the success of AVA’s inaugural conference ‘Opportunities and Challenges – Visual Arts Education in Asia’ in 2009, this year we bring some of the world’s leading creative thinkers together in Hong Kong to delve deeper into the notion of Praxis. How can we avoid falling into the trap of being pragmatic when undertaking research, so that poetics are nourished and supported rather than stifled by the need to articulate/publish, so that entrenched research paradigms do not stifle new modes of research that can be supported to emerge from artistic fields? Creative research adopts the language of the times, modeled upon the digital networks and the electronic circuitry of our age, rather than the mechanical factories designed in the industrial age.

We have the ability to use the affordances of the body to explore post-modernity’s alternative geographies. International Conference on Research Creativity – Praxis is about mapping this new terrain for research.

Program

Spend six intensive hours developing new ideas in relation to the body through the creative use of materials and praxis. Our aim is to provide a space where professionals and creative thinkers from a range of backgrounds explore the borders between art, science and technology.

This is a participant-driven workshop where you will be encouraged to collaborate, mash-up materials and technology and find ways to let innovation happen in real-time. Get an insight into the latest innovations in open source hardware gadgets and technologies and hi-tech Merino wool products from the workshop sponsors Seeed Studios and The Woolmark company. Then get your hands and imaginations to work guided by expert facilitators as they fast track the creative process through a Rapid Prototyping workshop using low-tech body storming techniques.

Participants will learn 3D pattern modeling for complex organic shapes as well as basic Seeedunio programming. Seeed Studios design modular electronics for quick prototyping and small scale projects. They also carry inventories from community innovators, and help people make, distribute their designs and collect the revenue.

Haptic InterFace Exhibition 2012 took place from November 21st – December 16th at the Koo Ming Kown Exhibition Gallery, Hong Kong. It featured art/design/multi-media work in the form of body related works from leading artists and designers around the world. Concepts/prototypes developed in the Wearables Lab were added to the core exhibition at the end of a 10-day intensive workshop.

HIF 2012 Participating Artists

Celina ALVARADO, Kristina ANDERSEN, Raymond AU, Sabrina BASTEN, Martin BELLARDI, Margarita BENITEZ, Dean BOUGH, Priscilla BRACKS, Katia CANEPA-VEGA, CHONG Wai, Meiyi CHEUNG, Bryan CHUNG, Anne-Christin DELAKOWITZ, Jared DONOVAN, Tricia FLANAGAN, Daniel GILGEN, Seraphine GUTEKUNST, Raune FRANKJAER, Hugo FUKS, Anne GRAHAM, Karyn HENSON, HO Siu Kee, Jonathan JAMES, Clare JOHNSTON, Freeman LAU, Kanta KOCHHAR-LINGDREN, LAM Chi-hin Jin, Dawn-Joy LEONG, LEUNG Mee Ping, Roger NG, Katherine OLSTON, Hector RODRIGUEZ, Gavin SADE, Audrey SAMSON, Elizabeth SHAW, Zoie SO, Markus VOGL, Danielle WILDE, Fionna WOODS

Opening hours : 9:30 – 4:30 weekdays

In November 2012 a group of professionals and creative thinkers from diverse backgrounds and cultures came together for ten-intensive-day’s in the Wearables Lab to explore the interactions of art, science and technology under the theme Haptic InterFace. The Wearables Lab, an innovative trans-disciplinary laboratory within the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University in Hong Kong, is equipped with state of the art technology and facilitated by a team of experts and support staff. The experimental prototypes developed in HIF 2012 will be on show in Australia for the first time for VIVID ideas.

Imagine shoes that enable you to have a physical awareness of another person walking. Sensors on the bottom of the shoes communicate via microcontrollers through smartphones to actuators on the top of another pair of shoes. When one person sits to rest, the other will feel the weight lift. When one runs, the other will feel increased pressure and faster rhythm. People wearing the prototype shoes and strangely sensing each others activity are currently walking around Trier, Germany, and Brisbane, Australia.

A set of wicker hats, reminiscent in shape to elongated Victorian bonnets, take the sound waves from the voice of the wearer and amplify them into kinetic energy in the other’s bonnet. One person experiences the voice of the other visually, through the movement of the brim above her eyes, and aurally through the chattering noise that the movement creates in the bamboo reeds from which the hat is constructed. The hat vibrates causing the brim sticks to chatter, in this way the voice is translated into a kind of whisper. Each hat responds to the other, engaging the wearers in an immersive, interactive, haptic, audio-visual experience.

A wearable pillow that surrounds the head alerts the wearer if he/she begins to snore. Based on a skivvy design around the neck, which holds the sensors in place, an Arduino single-board microcontroller and vibrator are embedded inside a padded sculpted hood, shaped like an egg laid on its side, the fully felted headpiece has the appearance of a surrealist sculpture, and the white felt fabric metaphorically evokes a cloud, an apt reference for dreaming and sleep.

By wearing specially designed white cuffs with ostrich feather plumage highlighted by a diffused pulsating red light, two people can sense each other’s presence even when they are out of visible range. The prototype cuffs read the pulse of one person and send it as vibration to another cuff. The production of many cuffs and their trial with larger groups will
enable interesting exploration of “swarm behavior.”

‘Blinklifier’, (pictured above) a wearable computer that amplifies voluntary and involuntary eyelid movement and powers a visible light array, uses bio-data directly to interact with the computer. Although the head-dress can be consciously controlled, this fashion artifact is designed to avoid conscious interaction and instead directly amplify the body’s expression. Blinklifier doesn’t look like a computer; its electronic components are nearly invisible. Attached to metalized fake eyelashes are lines of skin conductive ink. An Arduino microcontroller translates the eyelashes’ blinking movements into signals to light up the LEDs embedded in the large headdress. Facial expressions are complex but easily recognized and naturally understood. By their amplification through bodily worn devices, something usually overlooked in everyday life can become a rich source of knowledge, or open potential for new ways of communicating our emotions and of understanding others.

HIF participants: Celina Alvarado New York/Madrid; Sabrina Basten; Priscilla Bracks Brisbane Australia; Dean Brough Brisbane Australia; Raune Frankjaer Trier Germany; Dawn-Joy Leong Sydney Australia; Sandra Coelho Portugal; Katia Canepa-Vega Lima Peru; Meiyi Cheung Hong Kong SAR China; Jared Donovan Brisbane Australia; Tricia Flanagan Hong Kong/Australia; Geoph Frey Zurich Switzerland; Hugo Fuks Rio de Janeiro Brazil; Daniel Gilgen Trier Germany; Anne Graham Sydney Australia; Seraphine Gutekunst Hong Kong/ Switzerland; Karyn Henderson Wellington New Zealand; Jonathan James Newcastle Australia; Gavin Sade Brisbane Australia; Elizabeth Shaw Brisbane Australia.

Haptic InterFace Exhibition 2014 will take place from 3rd – 19th December at the Koo Ming Kown Exhibition Gallery, Hong Kong. It featured art/design/multi-media work in the form of body related works from leading artists/ designers/ scientists around the world.

The focus of 2014 exhibition is HIF Designing Experience.

In addition to the core exhibition a pop-up exhibition of concepts/prototypes developed in the Wearables Lab will be exhibited as a at the end of the 10-day intensive workshop. A public sympossium will take place, an opportunity to meet the 20 HIF workshop participants and get a global insite into latest exploritory research in the field.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

Haptic Interface 2014 – Designing Experience combines our current reality, our imagined future and our unimagined future with Fuller’s challenge by bringing together professionals and creative thinkers from different disciplines and cultures to explore the borders between art, science and technology in an innovative trans-disciplinary exhibition of new ideas in relation to the body through the creative use of materials and praxis.

Works in this exhibition consider an intermediary zone; not clearly part of the body (the intimate-self) or of the public (the communal-self) it can be viewed as a space of depth rather than surface.
The affordances of the body may undermine and even revise existing practices of embodiment and lead to new processes for navigating the alternative geographies of post-modernity.

Technology is increasingly becoming smaller and more powerful and access to data, faster and more portable, while scientific discoveries are revealing more about how our mind and bodies work. The resulting interconnected world of objects, beings and spaces is the environment we currently inhabit. It is within the intersecting nodes and spaces of accelerated change, through intelligence, imagination and innovation that we must imagine and design ethical and sustainable future(s) in which we want to live.

HIF 2014 Participating Artists

Sara ADHITYA, Isaac CHONG, Meiyi CHEUNG, Bryan CHUNG, Emma COOPER, Beck DAVIS, Jared DONOVAN, David EBNER, Tricia FLANAGAN, Raune FRANKJAER, Daniel GILGEN, Rafael GOMEZ, Dave HRYNKIW, HO Siu Kee, Ceci HO Sze Lo, Kinor JIANG, Erina KASHIHARA, Tobias KLEIN, Joey LAI, Miu Ling LAM, Daniel LAU Chak Kwong, Kosa LAW, Zoe MAHONY, Hofi MAN, Kit MESSHAM-MUIR, Jana MOERMANN, Ann MORRISON, Kingsley NG, Louis NG, Roger NG, Jake OLIVER-FISHMAN, Elizabeth SHAW, Michaela SWAN, Poly TAM, Anne WIEDAU, Musey XU, Tobias ZIMMER

This invitation represents an opportunity to spend six intensive hours developing new ideas in relation to the body through the creative use of materials and praxis. Our aim is to provide a space where professionals and creative thinkers from a range of backgrounds explore the borders between art, science and technology.

This is a participant-driven workshop where you will be encouraged to collaborate, mash-up materials and technology and find ways to let innovation happen in real-time. Get an insight into the latest innovations in open source hardware gadgets and technologies and hi-tech Merino wool products from the workshop sponsors Seeed Studios and The Woolmark company. Then get your hands and imaginations to work guided by expert facilitators Dr. Sade and Dr. Flanagan as they fast track the creative process through a Rapid Prototyping workshop using low-tech body storming techniques. Participants will learn 3D pattern modeling for complex organic shapes as well as basic Seeedunio programming. Seeed Studios design modular electronics for quick prototyping and small scale projects. They also carry inventories from community innovators, and help people make, distribute their designs and collect the revenue.

For user interfaces to become genuinely intelligent interactive systems, we must enable the development of interactive systems that can recognize unpredictable state changes, such as emotion, intention, desire, empathy, etc. User interfaces of the future will acknowledge the relationship between people, places and things as emergent spaces that generate meaning through everyday activity and therefore one in which users themselves act as co-designers. As we develop more intelligent technologies what is revealed is how little we understand of the complexity that makes up our own human form. By adopting an approach in which objects mediate human beings and human beings mediate objects we can acknowledge an alternative to the predominant separation of humans and things. The challenge is to fashion a future that is not based on predicting utopian visions but one that is responsive to changing conditions and acknowledges both mind and body.

Please BYO laptop computers to this workshop.

Please use the form to register your interest.

Haptic InterFace workshop will take place from 1st to 10th December 2014 in the Wearables Lab, an innovative trans-disciplinary laboratory at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. This invitation represents an opportunity to spend ten intensive days developing new ideas in relation to the body through the creative use of materials and praxis. Our aim is to provide a space where professionals and creative thinkers from a range of backgrounds explore the borders between art, science and technology.

This is a participant-driven workshop where you will be encouraged to collaborate, mashup materials and technology and find ways to let innovation happen in real-time, facilitated by a team of experts and support staff. The lab is equipped with state of the art technology, and depending on your research area, can draw on specific equipment available from the broad range of creative studios at the Academy of Visual Arts and partner institutions in order to support your creative investigations.

See how you can participate in the 2014 Haptic InterFace workshop in Hong Kong.

How to Apply

As there are a limited number of places available to the workshop and exhibition, selection is based on quality of previous work and creative capacity to contribution to the overall group.

These are the ways you could participate in Haptic InterFace 2014:

• Participate in the 10-day workshop PLUS submit an art/design work to be considered for inclusion in the exhibition.
• Participate in the 10-day workshop only.
• Submit an art/design work to be considered for inclusion in the exhibition only.

Please use the form to register your interest.

Making Mobilities

Pop-Up Prototype Launch

Date: Friday 14^th Dec
Time: 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Address: Woolmark Resource Centre, Unit 3305, 33/F, AIA Kowloon Tower, Landmark East, 100 How Ming Street, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong.

About

Image Credit: Maja Sieczko

Come and join a group of Australian artists and designers at the end of a three week journey across China, working with maker spaces and industry partners to design speculative and critical Wearable prototypes that are making our future mobile. Prototype presentations followed by drinks and nibbles (free admission).

Wearable technology is an exponentially growing sector. Markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (sensor and actuator) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. We live within the Internet of Things and Smart Cities are becoming reality.

No longer are we tethered to our tech through power cables, wearable technology enables freedom of movement. Technology is embedded in our bodies and the very fabric of clothes, augmenting our bodies, enabling mobility. The mobilities paradigm is reframing our future.

The Prototypes

SOLAR

SOLAR is a solar powered jacket, built not only for the flexible materials of today’s clothing but for the flexible needs of tomorrows future. By energizing our clothing, we can energize ourselves, pushing ourselves to be more mobile and able to adapt to the elements around us. We believe a long-distance hiking jacket is the best method by which to demonstrate the flourishing relationship of technology and fashion and it’s benefits to humanity. This design can target both hiking enthusiasts and be inviting enough to involve even those outside that community through a human and natural minimalist design.
Visit Solar Instructables Page

STRYDE

STRYDE gives amateur and intermediate runners the same insights available to professional athletes with low-cost, aesthetic and convenient wearables. Working on a pair of tights incorporating sensors to analyse landing and movement, as well as an auditory device to help runners maintain a consistent pace. The compression running tights communicate sensor readings back to a PC or mobile where a model for comparison can be used to provide feedback about what aspects of the runner’s stride may be improved. Ultimately these wearables aim to help mobile individuals improve performance, prevent injury and better understand their fitness activities.
Visit Stryde Instructables Page

UVU

UVU (ultra violet you) aims to promote awareness about skin damage from solar rays and ultra violet radiation within the Australian context. The Australian summer on average has one of the highest UV indexes, regularly reaching an intensity of 9.5, that can cause permeant damage to skin cells within 15 minutes. UVU aims to tackle this through focusing on the education surrounding ultra violet radiation and skin cancer. The initial concept is the UVU snap band, this band will sense the current UV level and the wearers exposure and convey this to the user. This is in the aim of highlighting the time it takes for damage to be caused, to encourage sun safety practice and focus on ingraining habitual habits.
Visit UVU Instructables Page

SHENSUO

SHENSUO is an adaptive skirt which aids in mobility via on board temperature regulation. Measuring via humidity and temperature sensors the Shensuo can find the user’s desired comfortability range and adjust itself to help to moderate insulation. The pleated skirt is composed of two elements, one opaque and one sheer panel. Once triggered the motors will adjust the angle of the pleated panels to expose the sheer side of the pleated (when adjusting to cool) and the opaque element (when adjusting to warmth). Day to night adaptive design also aids in aesthetic transition allowing for social mobility. The wearable also addresses day to night aesthetic requirements, adaptive to the rapid changing environment and social requirements of cosmopolitan target market – the wearable may use a time sensor to adapt to evening wear (e.g. past 7pm) or a manual plate trigger. This is addressed by an automated cinching function which draws the pleats inward to create a more streamlined fitted evening dress aesthetic.
Visit Shensuo Instructables Page

Event Dates

Sydney: 19 – 21 Sep 2018
China: 26 Nov – 15 Dec 2018

About

UNSW HIF Cloud workshop, organised by the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia, is an international, interdisciplinary hands-on workshop that takes place in Australia and China.

After the event in Sydney in September 2018, it will bring 18 students to 3 cities in China (Beijing, Hong Kong and Shenzhen), where the students will work together in creating wearable projects!

Let’s have a quick look at the projects and the teams!

If you are into hiking, just like us. The Solar project is exactly what you need! This project will be a good example to demonstrate the flourishing relationship between technology and fashion and it’s benefits to humanity. If you are not a hiking enthusiast, this jacket can also be a good way for you to experience human and natural minimalist design. The jacket is built not only for the flexible materials of today’s clothing but also for the flexible needs of the future.

For runners, no matter amateur, intermediate or professional athletes, the project Stryde brings great news to you. By incorporating sensors and auditory devices, Stryde offers low-cost, aesthetic and convenient wearables that will analyze landing and movement, as well as help runners maintain a consistent pace. It will ultimately help mobile individuals improve performance, prevent injury and better understand your fitness activities.

Project UVU provides a solution to promote awareness about skin damage from solar rays and ultraviolet radiation within the Australian context. UVU aims to tackle this through focusing on the education surrounding ultraviolet radiation and skin cancer. The initial concept is the UVU snap band, this band will sense the current UV level and the wearers’ exposure and convey this to the user. This is in the aim of highlighting the time it takes for damage to be caused, to encourage sun safety practice and focus on ingraining habitual habits.

Project Shensuo is an adaptive skirt which aids in mobility via onboard temperature regulation. Measuring via humidity and temperature sensors the Shensuo can find the user’s desired comfortability range and adjust itself to help to moderate insulation. The wearable also addresses day to night aesthetic requirements, adaptive to the rapidly changing environment and social requirements of the cosmopolitan target market – the wearable may use a time sensor to adapt to evening wear (e.g.past 7 pm) or a manual plate trigger.

Join us

at the HIF Cloud Meetup to learn more about these cool projects!

Event Time: 19:30-21:30, Dec 13th (Thursday), 2018
Event Location: Chaihuo x.factory

Related News

The University of New South Wales’s 4th HIF Cloud Workshop revisits eSUN Yisheng

WEARABLE PROJECTS FROM HIF CLOUD WORKSHOP PRESENTED AT CHAIHUO X.FACTORY

FUTUREself Exhibition of Wearable Prototypes

Exhibition Dates

Hong Kong: 9 December 2017
Unit 3305, 33/F AIA Kowloon Tower, Landmark East, Kwun Tong, Kowloon Hong Kong

Australia: 6-10th March 2018
Cnr Greens Rd and Oxford St, Paddington, NSW Australia

About the Exhibition

What’s the future got in store for us? Wearable technology, interactive media and smart textiles created by UNSW artists, designers, scientists and engineers will be on show for Sydney Design Festival.

Listen to audio interview – A Brave New World – The Future Of Wearable Technologies

Design is in discourse with contemporary issues in this outside-the-box approach to designing our future. From critical and speculative to functionally focused prototypes, the exhibition presents design thinking that grapples themes like sustainability, biodiversity, technogenesis and self-sustaining energy systems for life off the grid. Mass markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (Google glass and motion sensors) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. The absorption of technology into the very fabric of clothes, accessories and even bodies begins to dilute boundaries between physical, technological and social spheres and has potential implications for human evolution.

You will see a speculative automatic defence mechanism that alerts users of dangerous levels of pollution. The prototype utilises pollution sensors and motors to raise a functional smog mask around the wearer. Another mask acts as a filtration system for a visually saturated landscape. It is framed as a reclamation of public spaces, that have been taken from the public through excessive advertisements, sponsorships, and logos.

At the opening you can also see a demonstration of the interactive interface “Happy Brackets” or register to take a guided walk in one of Sydney’s urban rewilded environments wearing a cyborganic aid for empathetic experience of insects.

About the Artists

The HIF Cloud 2017 Workshop – wearables workshop ran in Sydney, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangdong and Hong Kong during summer 2017 and brought together varied disciplines – textiles, computer science, intermedia design, product design, SPI (sculpture/performance/installation), jewellery, bioengineering with an interest in exploring critical and speculative wearables to imagine the future self through art or design practice.

It challenged students in an inter-disciplinary, inter-national and inter-cultural collaboration to envision the future of wearables. The projects cast future scenarios for wearables that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich and transcend human interactions in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Projects

Origarment

CLIVE CHAN, ROBERT SLOAN, SIVAAN WALKER, ISABELLA WORSLEY, NEELAM GOPALANI

Origarment began as an exploration of multi-functional design concepts that could challenge the existing fast-fashion industry. The project was eventually realised as a transformable garment with shifting patterns that can be altered digitally. The garment is designed to seamlessly integrate into everyday life, and implements wireless charging technology to allow for effortless overnight charging while hanging in the wardrobe. Adaptive garments like this, that have the ability to modify their shape and pattern on demand will improve reuse and sustainability of the future fashion industry.

Techno Adaption

DEANNA WAWN, AMELIA LIU, ROSE ELLIOT, LAURA KEOGH, MAJA SIECZKO

Techno Adaptation considers the way that humankind will technologically adapt following the rise of pollution levels. Darwin’s theory of evolution no longer adheres to the biological form, as the time frames of adaptation shorten, humans have been unable to keep up with the rapidly changing environment around them. Technological intervention has become necessary for survival, the body and the computer have merged and developed into automatic defence mechanisms. Techno Adaptation presents a scarf that senses the pollution levels of the air around it, and is automatically raised when levels no longer become safe for the user. A heart rate sensor continually monitors and the users body, within higher pollution levels the lights present as warning signals to surrounding users.

Future Primal

JARED GRIFFITHS, HARRY EGGINGTON, MITCHELL SHELTON, AMY MALEK, JACK PARKER

Future Primal is a blending of high-fashion and reactionary deimatic behaviours. The piece questions whether animalistic instincts that humans have long lost could augment our ability to build relationships in a modern society.

Cocoon

MONISHA CHIPPADA, MARLENE BAQUIRAN, MICHAEL NGUYEN HUYNH, LEILA FRIJAT, KRISTONE CAPISTRANO

The Cocoon is a playful speculative tool for navigating our media heavy landscape. Combining easily accessible technology with experimental fashion, the headpiece is a challenge for individuals of society to reject the countless logos and advertisements that confront us in day to day life. A miniature display inside the headpiece is linked to a small camera that sits on the front. When users direct their gaze to logos, software that has been trained to detect such images automatically blurs them. This process works as a deconstruction of censorship, toying with the idea of the ‘forbidden’ to address the current state of visual hierarchy in the public space. The cocoon instead hopes to give attention back to people, nature and the power of our immediate environments.

Wanderer

ELIZABETH READ, JAY RICKARDS, RUTH SAVEKA, ANGELO YAN

Wearable technology is becoming a big part of our lives with the development of “smart” devic- es such as smart phones and smart watches. These devices provide many benefits and are so useful that we have reached a point where we are dependent on them. Unfortunately, these devices are battery powered and need to be regularly charged. As a consequence, society has become limited by the availability of power sockets and charging cables.

Haptic Wanderer aims to remove our reliance on charging by harnessing the kinetic energy we produce while walking and running, thus taking society “off the grid”. This gives us the ability to produce the electricity we consume so that we become self-sufficient allowing us to get in touch with our ancestors who lived off the land and produced everything they consumed.

Cyborganic

Press

Futuristic fashion: UNSW students design the new wave of wearables

The anti-smog scarf: Creating the wearable tech of the future

The 3rd HIF Cloud Workshop 2017 explores the theme FUTUREself.

It challenges students in an inter-disciplinary, inter-national and inter-cultural collaboration to envision the future of wearables. The projects will cast future scenarios for wearables that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich and transcend human interactions in the Asia-Pacific region.

The future of wearable technology is here…

Mass markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (Google glass and motion sensors) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment.

By enabling the connection of divergent data sets, wearables provide life-augmenting levels of interactivity that could benefit and enrich the ways that we understand individual and community wellbeing. The absorption of technology into the very fabric of clothes, accessories and even bodies begins to dilute boundaries between physical, technological and social spheres and has potential implications for human evolution.

The workshop provides a platform for broader debate around wearable technology, our mediated future selves and human interactions in this future landscape.

4-day intensive preparation workshop + 20 day international immersive mobility experience

4-day intensive preparation course June 27-29 and 8th Sep.

The China mobility experience begins in Hong Kong with a series of workshops with students from partner universities Hong Kong Polytechnic University, City University of Hong Kong and Queensland University of Technology.

Then we spend a week in Beijing visiting Galleries and individual artist’s studios, learning Mandarin and creating prototype wearables at Makercollider Beijing.

Then we head south to work with master craftspeople in Nanhai rattan weaving village in Guangdong Province, visit Dafen artists’ village in Shenzhen, and visit 3D print and electronics companies.

We will continue to develop wearable prototypes with the engineers at Esun and Seeedstudios XFactory.

The resulting wearable prototypes will be launched along with student led public workshops.

We return to Hong Kong for the last day of the course.

THIS WORKSHOP HAS FINISHED

Testimonials from this Workshop

We learned a lot about China and I like to think we learned a lot about ourselves, and made connections that will last a lifetime. Jared Griffiths

Hong Kong Felt so vibrant and so alive I don’t think I have ever felt this in Sydney. Being in a completely different environment felt strangely ’usual’ even though some of it was hard to stomach at times crazy had become pretty normal. With so many incredibly talented people I only got to take a glance into their lives, I only wish I could have met them individually and personally. The outcome of their dedication and skills inspired me to work harder and to achieve more.
Robert Sloan

Our first impressions of Hong Kong was fraught with a prevalent feeling of claustrophobia, but also an invigorating liveliness. A million miniature stories happening at once.
Marleen Baquiran

Beijing was very different to Hong Kong. The Sheer scale of the city completely blew me away. This was such an amazing experience to be a part of. I’ve learnt so much and made so many new friends. I am exceptionally proud of my group and our project. Working in this part of Asia really opened my eyes and broadened my horizons. I cannot wait to apply some new ideas and teachings to my design practice. Thank you.
Isabella Worsley

I don’t think I could have ever anticipated how I felt once I landed in Hong Kong. Being present in a world which is this weird mix of similarity but is also entirely different at the same time. You find yourself questioning the perceptions you have about these places, assessing how unaligned they are with reality and also challenging from where you get these ideas about these places. Looking back, I found that working on our projects and collaborating with local students let us experience China in a less touristy and superficial way. We had the privilege of hearing about the way that these students thought.
Leila Frijat

A fresh pair of eyes and collaboration are always constructive.
Monisha Chippada

This was my first time overseas so it was a really good opportunity for me, and while we did have the opportunity to visit cultural heritage sites like the Great Wall of china and the forbidden city I kind of found my most significant cultural exchange moments being within the everydayness of travelling, of trying to find my way through the city, and finding food, and being able to see the daily rituals and values that people have there. Like seeing elder citizens in the city practicing ti chi in groups in the morning. Overall it was really great opportunity to be able to go overseas and work on this project in a really fast paced environment and to be able to readjust my skills set for what was needed at the time.
Maja Sieczko

This was my first trip overseas and my cultural experience was amazing, I met so many great locals and explored some truly amazing places. I really left my comfort zone, eating new different things everyday – trying to communicate with the locals and even normal everyday things like trying to cross the road when everyone drives like crazy. Overall this was one of the most enjoyable things I have done in my life and I can’t wait to go back to China in the future.
Mitchelle Shelton

I created the Lovely Deadly brand with the premise of utilising high quality natural fabric with feminine silhouettes to deliver both innovative yet classic designs. The HIF cloud workshop granted me the ability to challenge the critical design process in my medium of textiles, with our exploration into the Chinese design and textile industry proving invaluable in the formation of my practice’s foundation. The collaborative environment of the HIF cloud workshop as well as the abundance of professional mentoring throughout proved the experience as one both culturally and intellectually enlightening.
Jay Rickard

The Great Wall was more incredible than I imagined. The wall followed the curves of the mountaintops. It was an amazing feeling to walk on a structure that was built thousands of years ago.
I have never seen electronics production so this was a real eye opener. The X factory studio tour was a dream come true, all the resources for prototyping you could imagine, all in one place. It was great to meet the other makers working in this space. Artists from all over the world come to work in the X Factory Space.
Laura Keogh

The rich cultural history surrounding the forbidden city was surreal. To think I was walking on the very pavement where once a whole Empire existed. The Great Wall of China. Something spiritual was happening that I did not quite understand. I often wonder if my ancestors had journey that way before, like Mongolia? I know men Asia Pacific had come to Torres Strait to follow the pearling industry and had since influenced the entire Torres Strait with their language, religion, family and cuisine. Some had stayed and died in the Torres Strait without returning to their homeland.
Ruth Saveka

We took inspiration from the local weaving village, foundry and the local painting village which really blew our minds in terms of what is possible in china and what’s possible in the world and exactly how much we are consuming as a global community. Some of the important learnings from our project included the important interplay between design and technology and how collaboration and working simultaneously throughout the design process is important for its final success.
Neelam Gopalani

I have only stayed in the central area of Hong Kong from previous visits and got to discover the great architects and the bustling vibe that Hong Kong is known for. But on this trip, I got to see to so much more, from different HK universities, to walking down temple street and ladies market, going to Shan Shui Po for material shopping and found an incredible fabric market under a massive tent. I got to experience Hong Kong on a much deeper level in terms of understanding it’s traditions more through daily interaction with local citizens. Language class in the morning was a fun time for me hearing everyone speaking my first language. This trip has made me appreciate my ability to speak Chinese so much more than before, as I was able to help everyone to get around in China.
Amelia Liu

Shenzhen was really amazing, we got to see the metal foundry, which I thought was amazing, I think everyone forgets that these things are made by hand still. So that was a really cool thing to see, so I enjoyed that a lot. We also got to see XFactory and eSun and Seeed so we got to learn how things are made there, and I had a really good time getting to see how things are made in China. The date that we had on the 8th September, when we had to all sit down and think about our values, that day really prompted us to think about what we are going to do and why we are doing it and we had a really strong connection after that. So thanks Tricia, for doing that cause that was really helpful for our team, I think if it wasn’t for that day where we all assessed our values and what we had been doing so far we would have been a lot more lost. So thanks Tricia I really enjoyed the trip.
Sivaan Walker

The inaugural Cloud Workshop challenged students from Industrial Design, Product Design, Fashion, Interaction & Visual Design and Visual Arts from the Asia-Pacific region to envision the future of wearable technology for the well being of users. Projects cast future scenarios for wearable technologies that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich connections between citizens of Australia and Hong Kong.

This exhibition showcased a selection of prototypes from the student outcomes. They represent exciting visions for wearable devices that connect and enrich citizen life between Australia and Hong Kong.

Projects

Emotional

Tether

Collide

Altostratus

The future of wearable technology is here. Mass markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable devices.

Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. By enabling the connection of divergent data sets, wearables provide life-augmenting levels of interactivity that could benefit and enrich the ways that we understand individual and community wellbeing.

The inaugural Cloud Workshop challenges a selection of art and design students from the Asia-Pacific region to envision the future of wearable technology for the well-being of users. Projects will cast future scenarios for wearable technologies that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich connections between citizens of Australia and Hong Kong.

Details

The project will be run as a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural activity consisting of Industrial and Product Design, Visual Arts, Interaction and Visual Design and Fashion Design students working in collaborative teams of 3-4 consisting of students from each institution.

Students will attend an intensive 6.5 day workshop led by the project coordinators. In the first two days students will be presented with theory and information relevant to the workshop theme and then they will have 2 weeks to collaborate, design and prototype future visions of wearable technologies that will answer the brief provided. They will be provided guidance by professional experts in various fields including design, arts, fashion, digital technologies and industry.

To conclude, an exhibition will be held at both locations simultaneously to present the cutting-edge ideas and showcase the work to the community.

HIF Cloud workshop is brought to you by the AVA Wearables Lab, Hong Kong Baptist University in partnership with School of Design, Queensland University of Technology and Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. It is an undergraduate version of the Haptic InterFace workshop.

The inaugural Cloud Workshop challenged 27 students from Industrial Design, Product Design, Fashion, Interaction & Visual Design and Visual Arts from the Asia-Pacific region to envision the future of wearable technology for the well being of users. Projects cast future scenarios for wearable technologies that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich connections between citizens of Australia and Hong Kong.

This exhibition showcased a selection of prototypes from the student outcomes. They represent exciting visions for wearable devices that connect and enrich citizen life between Australia and Hong Kong.

The future of wearable technology is here. Mass markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (Google glass and motion sensors) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. By enabling the connection of divergent data sets, wearables provide life-augmenting levels of interactivity that could benefit and enrich the ways that we understand individual and community wellbeing.

The inaugural Cloud Workshop challenges a selection of art and design students from the Asia-Pacific region to envision the future of wearable technology for the well-being of users. Projects will cast future scenarios for wearable technologies that harness the power of cloud computing to enrich connections between citizens of Australia and Hong Kong.

Details

The project will be run as a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural activity consisting of Industrial and Product Design, Visual Arts, Interaction and Visual Design and Fashion Design students working in collaborative teams of 3-4 consisting of students from each institution.

Students will attend an intensive 6.5 day workshop led by the project coordinators. In the first two days students will be presented with theory and information relevant to the workshop theme and then they will have 2 weeks to collaborate, design and prototype future visions of wearable technologies that will answer the brief provided. They will be provided guidance by professional experts in various fields including design, arts, fashion, digital technologies and industry.

To conclude, an exhibition will be held at both locations simultaneously to present the cutting-edge ideas and showcase the work to the community.

HIF Cloud workshop is brought to you by the AVA Wearables Lab, Hong Kong Baptist University in partnership with School of Design, Queensland University of Technology and Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. It is an undergraduate version of the Haptic InterFace workshop.

Process

DAY 1: THEORY

A day full of introductions, hello’s, finger sandwiches, coffee and skype… lots and lots of skype… Nonetheless a day full of fun, laughs and expectations. The staff led students through the project outline, brief, activities and finally some lectures to inspire and trigger discussion, thoughts and ideas for students in Australia and Hong Kong. Looking forward to day two…

DAY 2: INDUCTIONS, TECH TALKS AND RESEARCH

Day 2 saw students from QUT and QCA getting introduced to the Fabrication Lab at The Edge. HKBU students were presented with technology available at Seeed Studios, one of the project partners. Overall, students began to slowly conceptualise, envision and explore ideas about what they can achieve with their wearable design and art pieces.

DAY 3: MORE AND MORE TECHNOLOGY…

Hong Kong students continued advancing their technology skillsets and began to generate wearable propositions based on the project theme. Australian students were captivated by the possibilities (and limitations) of working with wearable technologies.

DAY 4: DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

Day 4 saw the beginning of the students forming inter-disciplinary groups across the three institutions. It was not always smooth sailing, but that is the nature of culturally and disciplinary diverse groups; all part of the learning and experimentation. Students began to develop concepts and ideas that brought the theme of the project together into physical manifestations.

DAY 6: CONCEPT PRESENTATIONS

Day 6 was hectic with multidisciplinary groups consisting of Hong Kong and Australian students presenting their work to the team. Five groups presented their proposals ranging from satellite dishes and gloves that spell out words in other languages through to dance enhancing costumes and emotion-sensitive jewellery. A good day!

DAY 7: IDEA GENERATION

As the second week started to roll on, student teams began to construct their prototypes. The designs and ideas were starting to take shape and words like ‘soldering’ and ‘cross-stitch’ were starting to be used regularly. The long hours students were putting in clearly reflected the significant effort and energy they were investing in the development of their ideas and concepts.

DAY 8: CUTTING, SEWING AND CODING

Day 8 saw students continuing to develop their designs using their newly-found skills and knowledge. They continued to develop and evolve their concepts through physical manifestations and prototyping.

Resources

PROJECT NOTES

General Cloud Workshop Introduction + Expectations

Hong Kong Students Course Outline Document

Hong Kong Students Assessment Document

Griffith QCA Students Course Outline Document

LECTURE SERIES

Lecture 1 Dr Tricia Flanagan

Lecture 2 Dr Rafael Gomez

Lecture 3 Beck Davis

2029: Fashion Futurism

SCHEDULES

Hong Kong Full Schedule

Australia Full Schedule

EXTERNAL LINKS

Wearable Devices

Smart Contact Lens: Google + Novartis

The Human Cloud: Wearable Technology from Novelty to Production

TED Wearable Tech Talks

School of Visual Arts: Master of Fine Arts Projects

Future of Wearable Tech Slideshow

NMC Horizon Report: What is Wearable Technology

Intel: Make It Wearable

Adafruit

Mashable Wearable Technology

CNET Wearable Tech

Wearable Technologies

Wearable Tech News

Samsung Wearables

Medical Design Technology

As our societies are increasingly reliant on technology, what becomes obvious is the unique contribution that corporeal experience plays in creativity, and creativity plays in research. Scholarship in art creation is equal to that in scientific research. Art creation in some cases may also be the result of research.

Exploring the borders in art, science and technology, the International Conference on Research Creativity: Praxis seeks to define this relationship beyond human geography. Networks that are sites of research and practices embedded in a larger context are often cross-connected with social movements of locally and globally networked societies.

Following the success of AVA’s inaugural conference ‘Opportunities and Challenges – Visual Arts Education in Asia’ in 2009, this year we bring some of the world’s leading creative thinkers together in Hong Kong to delve deeper into the notion of Praxis. How can we avoid falling into the trap of being pragmatic when undertaking research, so that poetics are nourished and supported rather than stifled by the need to articulate/publish, so that entrenched research paradigms do not stifle new modes of research that can be supported to emerge from artistic fields? Creative research adopts the language of the times, modeled upon the digital networks and the electronic circuitry of our age, rather than the mechanical factories designed in the industrial age.

We have the ability to use the affordances of the body to explore post-modernity’s alternative geographies. International Conference on Research Creativity – Praxis is about mapping this new terrain for research.

Program

Spend six intensive hours developing new ideas in relation to the body through the creative use of materials and praxis. Our aim is to provide a space where professionals and creative thinkers from a range of backgrounds explore the borders between art, science and technology.

This is a participant-driven workshop where you will be encouraged to collaborate, mash-up materials and technology and find ways to let innovation happen in real-time. Get an insight into the latest innovations in open source hardware gadgets and technologies and hi-tech Merino wool products from the workshop sponsors Seeed Studios and The Woolmark company. Then get your hands and imaginations to work guided by expert facilitators as they fast track the creative process through a Rapid Prototyping workshop using low-tech body storming techniques.

Participants will learn 3D pattern modeling for complex organic shapes as well as basic Seeedunio programming. Seeed Studios design modular electronics for quick prototyping and small scale projects. They also carry inventories from community innovators, and help people make, distribute their designs and collect the revenue.

Haptic InterFace Exhibition 2012 took place from November 21st – December 16th at the Koo Ming Kown Exhibition Gallery, Hong Kong. It featured art/design/multi-media work in the form of body related works from leading artists and designers around the world. Concepts/prototypes developed in the Wearables Lab were added to the core exhibition at the end of a 10-day intensive workshop.

HIF 2012 Participating Artists

Celina ALVARADO, Kristina ANDERSEN, Raymond AU, Sabrina BASTEN, Martin BELLARDI, Margarita BENITEZ, Dean BOUGH, Priscilla BRACKS, Katia CANEPA-VEGA, CHONG Wai, Meiyi CHEUNG, Bryan CHUNG, Anne-Christin DELAKOWITZ, Jared DONOVAN, Tricia FLANAGAN, Daniel GILGEN, Seraphine GUTEKUNST, Raune FRANKJAER, Hugo FUKS, Anne GRAHAM, Karyn HENSON, HO Siu Kee, Jonathan JAMES, Clare JOHNSTON, Freeman LAU, Kanta KOCHHAR-LINGDREN, LAM Chi-hin Jin, Dawn-Joy LEONG, LEUNG Mee Ping, Roger NG, Katherine OLSTON, Hector RODRIGUEZ, Gavin SADE, Audrey SAMSON, Elizabeth SHAW, Zoie SO, Markus VOGL, Danielle WILDE, Fionna WOODS

Opening hours : 9:30 – 4:30 weekdays

In November 2012 a group of professionals and creative thinkers from diverse backgrounds and cultures came together for ten-intensive-day’s in the Wearables Lab to explore the interactions of art, science and technology under the theme Haptic InterFace. The Wearables Lab, an innovative trans-disciplinary laboratory within the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University in Hong Kong, is equipped with state of the art technology and facilitated by a team of experts and support staff. The experimental prototypes developed in HIF 2012 will be on show in Australia for the first time for VIVID ideas.

Imagine shoes that enable you to have a physical awareness of another person walking. Sensors on the bottom of the shoes communicate via microcontrollers through smartphones to actuators on the top of another pair of shoes. When one person sits to rest, the other will feel the weight lift. When one runs, the other will feel increased pressure and faster rhythm. People wearing the prototype shoes and strangely sensing each others activity are currently walking around Trier, Germany, and Brisbane, Australia.

A set of wicker hats, reminiscent in shape to elongated Victorian bonnets, take the sound waves from the voice of the wearer and amplify them into kinetic energy in the other’s bonnet. One person experiences the voice of the other visually, through the movement of the brim above her eyes, and aurally through the chattering noise that the movement creates in the bamboo reeds from which the hat is constructed. The hat vibrates causing the brim sticks to chatter, in this way the voice is translated into a kind of whisper. Each hat responds to the other, engaging the wearers in an immersive, interactive, haptic, audio-visual experience.

A wearable pillow that surrounds the head alerts the wearer if he/she begins to snore. Based on a skivvy design around the neck, which holds the sensors in place, an Arduino single-board microcontroller and vibrator are embedded inside a padded sculpted hood, shaped like an egg laid on its side, the fully felted headpiece has the appearance of a surrealist sculpture, and the white felt fabric metaphorically evokes a cloud, an apt reference for dreaming and sleep.

By wearing specially designed white cuffs with ostrich feather plumage highlighted by a diffused pulsating red light, two people can sense each other’s presence even when they are out of visible range. The prototype cuffs read the pulse of one person and send it as vibration to another cuff. The production of many cuffs and their trial with larger groups will
enable interesting exploration of “swarm behavior.”

‘Blinklifier’, (pictured above) a wearable computer that amplifies voluntary and involuntary eyelid movement and powers a visible light array, uses bio-data directly to interact with the computer. Although the head-dress can be consciously controlled, this fashion artifact is designed to avoid conscious interaction and instead directly amplify the body’s expression. Blinklifier doesn’t look like a computer; its electronic components are nearly invisible. Attached to metalized fake eyelashes are lines of skin conductive ink. An Arduino microcontroller translates the eyelashes’ blinking movements into signals to light up the LEDs embedded in the large headdress. Facial expressions are complex but easily recognized and naturally understood. By their amplification through bodily worn devices, something usually overlooked in everyday life can become a rich source of knowledge, or open potential for new ways of communicating our emotions and of understanding others.

HIF participants: Celina Alvarado New York/Madrid; Sabrina Basten; Priscilla Bracks Brisbane Australia; Dean Brough Brisbane Australia; Raune Frankjaer Trier Germany; Dawn-Joy Leong Sydney Australia; Sandra Coelho Portugal; Katia Canepa-Vega Lima Peru; Meiyi Cheung Hong Kong SAR China; Jared Donovan Brisbane Australia; Tricia Flanagan Hong Kong/Australia; Geoph Frey Zurich Switzerland; Hugo Fuks Rio de Janeiro Brazil; Daniel Gilgen Trier Germany; Anne Graham Sydney Australia; Seraphine Gutekunst Hong Kong/ Switzerland; Karyn Henderson Wellington New Zealand; Jonathan James Newcastle Australia; Gavin Sade Brisbane Australia; Elizabeth Shaw Brisbane Australia.

Haptic InterFace Exhibition 2014 will take place from 3rd – 19th December at the Koo Ming Kown Exhibition Gallery, Hong Kong. It featured art/design/multi-media work in the form of body related works from leading artists/ designers/ scientists around the world.

The focus of 2014 exhibition is HIF Designing Experience.

In addition to the core exhibition a pop-up exhibition of concepts/prototypes developed in the Wearables Lab will be exhibited as a at the end of the 10-day intensive workshop. A public sympossium will take place, an opportunity to meet the 20 HIF workshop participants and get a global insite into latest exploritory research in the field.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

Haptic Interface 2014 – Designing Experience combines our current reality, our imagined future and our unimagined future with Fuller’s challenge by bringing together professionals and creative thinkers from different disciplines and cultures to explore the borders between art, science and technology in an innovative trans-disciplinary exhibition of new ideas in relation to the body through the creative use of materials and praxis.

Works in this exhibition consider an intermediary zone; not clearly part of the body (the intimate-self) or of the public (the communal-self) it can be viewed as a space of depth rather than surface.
The affordances of the body may undermine and even revise existing practices of embodiment and lead to new processes for navigating the alternative geographies of post-modernity.

Technology is increasingly becoming smaller and more powerful and access to data, faster and more portable, while scientific discoveries are revealing more about how our mind and bodies work. The resulting interconnected world of objects, beings and spaces is the environment we currently inhabit. It is within the intersecting nodes and spaces of accelerated change, through intelligence, imagination and innovation that we must imagine and design ethical and sustainable future(s) in which we want to live.

HIF 2014 Participating Artists

Sara ADHITYA, Isaac CHONG, Meiyi CHEUNG, Bryan CHUNG, Emma COOPER, Beck DAVIS, Jared DONOVAN, David EBNER, Tricia FLANAGAN, Raune FRANKJAER, Daniel GILGEN, Rafael GOMEZ, Dave HRYNKIW, HO Siu Kee, Ceci HO Sze Lo, Kinor JIANG, Erina KASHIHARA, Tobias KLEIN, Joey LAI, Miu Ling LAM, Daniel LAU Chak Kwong, Kosa LAW, Zoe MAHONY, Hofi MAN, Kit MESSHAM-MUIR, Jana MOERMANN, Ann MORRISON, Kingsley NG, Louis NG, Roger NG, Jake OLIVER-FISHMAN, Elizabeth SHAW, Michaela SWAN, Poly TAM, Anne WIEDAU, Musey XU, Tobias ZIMMER

This invitation represents an opportunity to spend six intensive hours developing new ideas in relation to the body through the creative use of materials and praxis. Our aim is to provide a space where professionals and creative thinkers from a range of backgrounds explore the borders between art, science and technology.

This is a participant-driven workshop where you will be encouraged to collaborate, mash-up materials and technology and find ways to let innovation happen in real-time. Get an insight into the latest innovations in open source hardware gadgets and technologies and hi-tech Merino wool products from the workshop sponsors Seeed Studios and The Woolmark company. Then get your hands and imaginations to work guided by expert facilitators Dr. Sade and Dr. Flanagan as they fast track the creative process through a Rapid Prototyping workshop using low-tech body storming techniques. Participants will learn 3D pattern modeling for complex organic shapes as well as basic Seeedunio programming. Seeed Studios design modular electronics for quick prototyping and small scale projects. They also carry inventories from community innovators, and help people make, distribute their designs and collect the revenue.

For user interfaces to become genuinely intelligent interactive systems, we must enable the development of interactive systems that can recognize unpredictable state changes, such as emotion, intention, desire, empathy, etc. User interfaces of the future will acknowledge the relationship between people, places and things as emergent spaces that generate meaning through everyday activity and therefore one in which users themselves act as co-designers. As we develop more intelligent technologies what is revealed is how little we understand of the complexity that makes up our own human form. By adopting an approach in which objects mediate human beings and human beings mediate objects we can acknowledge an alternative to the predominant separation of humans and things. The challenge is to fashion a future that is not based on predicting utopian visions but one that is responsive to changing conditions and acknowledges both mind and body.

Please BYO laptop computers to this workshop.

Please use the form to register your interest.

Haptic InterFace workshop will take place from 1st to 10th December 2014 in the Wearables Lab, an innovative trans-disciplinary laboratory at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. This invitation represents an opportunity to spend ten intensive days developing new ideas in relation to the body through the creative use of materials and praxis. Our aim is to provide a space where professionals and creative thinkers from a range of backgrounds explore the borders between art, science and technology.

This is a participant-driven workshop where you will be encouraged to collaborate, mashup materials and technology and find ways to let innovation happen in real-time, facilitated by a team of experts and support staff. The lab is equipped with state of the art technology, and depending on your research area, can draw on specific equipment available from the broad range of creative studios at the Academy of Visual Arts and partner institutions in order to support your creative investigations.

See how you can participate in the 2014 Haptic InterFace workshop in Hong Kong.

How to Apply

As there are a limited number of places available to the workshop and exhibition, selection is based on quality of previous work and creative capacity to contribution to the overall group.

These are the ways you could participate in Haptic InterFace 2014:

• Participate in the 10-day workshop PLUS submit an art/design work to be considered for inclusion in the exhibition.
• Participate in the 10-day workshop only.
• Submit an art/design work to be considered for inclusion in the exhibition only.

Please use the form to register your interest.

Making Mobilities

Pop-Up Prototype Launch

Date: Friday 14^th Dec
Time: 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Address: Woolmark Resource Centre, Unit 3305, 33/F, AIA Kowloon Tower, Landmark East, 100 How Ming Street, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong.

About

Image Credit: Maja Sieczko

Come and join a group of Australian artists and designers at the end of a three week journey across China, working with maker spaces and industry partners to design speculative and critical Wearable prototypes that are making our future mobile. Prototype presentations followed by drinks and nibbles (free admission).

Wearable technology is an exponentially growing sector. Markets are rapidly adapting and transitioning from portable (mobile phones, tablets) to wearable (sensor and actuator) devices. Wearables that live on, near or in our bodies give rise to a previously unimagined level of data about users and the environment. We live within the Internet of Things and Smart Cities are becoming reality.

No longer are we tethered to our tech through power cables, wearable technology enables freedom of movement. Technology is embedded in our bodies and the very fabric of clothes, augmenting our bodies, enabling mobility. The mobilities paradigm is reframing our future.

The Prototypes

SOLAR

SOLAR is a solar powered jacket, built not only for the flexible materials of today’s clothing but for the flexible needs of tomorrows future. By energizing our clothing, we can energize ourselves, pushing ourselves to be more mobile and able to adapt to the elements around us. We believe a long-distance hiking jacket is the best method by which to demonstrate the flourishing relationship of technology and fashion and it’s benefits to humanity. This design can target both hiking enthusiasts and be inviting enough to involve even those outside that community through a human and natural minimalist design.
Visit Solar Instructables Page

STRYDE

STRYDE gives amateur and intermediate runners the same insights available to professional athletes with low-cost, aesthetic and convenient wearables. Working on a pair of tights incorporating sensors to analyse landing and movement, as well as an auditory device to help runners maintain a consistent pace. The compression running tights communicate sensor readings back to a PC or mobile where a model for comparison can be used to provide feedback about what aspects of the runner’s stride may be improved. Ultimately these wearables aim to help mobile individuals improve performance, prevent injury and better understand their fitness activities.
Visit Stryde Instructables Page

UVU

UVU (ultra violet you) aims to promote awareness about skin damage from solar rays and ultra violet radiation within the Australian context. The Australian summer on average has one of the highest UV indexes, regularly reaching an intensity of 9.5, that can cause permeant damage to skin cells within 15 minutes. UVU aims to tackle this through focusing on the education surrounding ultra violet radiation and skin cancer. The initial concept is the UVU snap band, this band will sense the current UV level and the wearers exposure and convey this to the user. This is in the aim of highlighting the time it takes for damage to be caused, to encourage sun safety practice and focus on ingraining habitual habits.
Visit UVU Instructables Page

SHENSUO

SHENSUO is an adaptive skirt which aids in mobility via on board temperature regulation. Measuring via humidity and temperature sensors the Shensuo can find the user’s desired comfortability range and adjust itself to help to moderate insulation. The pleated skirt is composed of two elements, one opaque and one sheer panel. Once triggered the motors will adjust the angle of the pleated panels to expose the sheer side of the pleated (when adjusting to cool) and the opaque element (when adjusting to warmth). Day to night adaptive design also aids in aesthetic transition allowing for social mobility. The wearable also addresses day to night aesthetic requirements, adaptive to the rapid changing environment and social requirements of cosmopolitan target market – the wearable may use a time sensor to adapt to evening wear (e.g. past 7pm) or a manual plate trigger. This is addressed by an automated cinching function which draws the pleats inward to create a more streamlined fitted evening dress aesthetic.
Visit Shensuo Instructables Page

Event Dates

Sydney: 19 – 21 Sep 2018
China: 26 Nov – 15 Dec 2018

About

UNSW HIF Cloud workshop, organised by the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia, is an international, interdisciplinary hands-on workshop that takes place in Australia and China.

After the event in Sydney in September 2018, it will bring 18 students to 3 cities in China (Beijing, Hong Kong and Shenzhen), where the students will work together in creating wearable projects!

Let’s have a quick look at the projects and the teams!

If you are into hiking, just like us. The Solar project is exactly what you need! This project will be a good example to demonstrate the flourishing relationship between technology and fashion and it’s benefits to humanity. If you are not a hiking enthusiast, this jacket can also be a good way for you to experience human and natural minimalist design. The jacket is built not only for the flexible materials of today’s clothing but also for the flexible needs of the future.