Stitch, bitch, make/perform: wearables and performance

The current technology fervour over wearable technology that collects user’s intimate body data, under the pretence of medical or fitness monitoring, highlights that it is time that critical questions were raised, in a variety of ways. The ethics of corporate ownership of body data for consumerist agendas is rarely discussed beyond the fine print on these devices. More awareness and education on these ethical issues would allow more access, ownership, and creativity in the use of one’s own body data, enabling new methods to express personal identity through this data. This paper will discuss how the ethical issues of wearable data collection can be addressed, and the new collaborative project by the authors, which focuses on bringing performers together to address data ownership and personal identity using wearable technology through performance experiments. The second part of this paper will also outline Baker’s new research initiative, a meetup or working group, with the long-term intention to develop into a collaborative, non-institutional research laboratory. This group’s initial focus has a longer-term view to find solutions for more ethical, aesthetics, sustainable, and expressive wearable interfaces, using etextiles and emerging technologies, especially for art and performance. This paper will include and outline potential panel discussion topics at the EVA Conference, addressed herein