whisper:why

whisper : wearable body architectures

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whisper why

With increasing use of the internet and mobile, wireless communications technologies, limitations in our modes of communication are becoming increasingly evident. People want smarter computers that understand them, and current technologies are not expressive enough to fulfill these needs. More intimate and affective signals, such as touch or physiological data, suppressed and the aesthetic or poetic qualities are too frequently overlooked.

The whisper project is a means of integrating these missing modes of communication into both human-human networked systems as well as human-computer interfaces, to leverage the invisible cues that we, as humans, use for context [Pic2000]. We are developing technology and communication metaphors that enable networked wearable devices to communicate affective states expressively in a continuous manner.

whisper[s] are wearable body architectures that read physiological data and transmit this information through graphics, sounds or haptics. Our aesthetic is deliberately ambiguous, almost a ‘reconstructed feminine’ but with hard edges; it is a juxtaposition of what seems like the ‘soft organic’ with the ‘soft & hard inorganic’. Fashion, for us, is vastly innovative and seductive. Prosthetics are creepily creative. The opulent is fundamentally not about cost but about sensuality. Skin is the richest source of inspiration: marked, mapped, extended, exposed, nurtured, celebrated.