Wearable Tech: Tech, Fashion, Art, All of the Above or None of the Above? Is Wearable Tech just a toy to engineers or does it have a function?

Hey, I'm back from my visit with Adafruit.  It was so exciting to hang out with Becky Stern and see all of her great wearable tech items in person.  It was also amazing to witness parts being made (I got some mini controllers that were just made!) and to see so many spirited people picking and packing.  It's very appropriate that I bring up Becky's name, because I met up with her at a recent Wearable Tech Demo and Panel held at Eyebeam's gallery in NYC.  The very question I'm posing today about the argument between the intersection of tech, fashion and art is what I asked her.  Check out her comment...

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RE: Wearable Tech: Tech, Fashion, Art, All of the Above or None of the Above? Is Wearable Tech just a toy to engineers or does it have a function?

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When I saw Becky's desk yesterday, she was actually in the process of taking a FitBit apart.  One of the best things you can ever do is reverse engineer a product to see how it is made.  I know I'm preaching to the choir here   Many people like the tech element of this particular product, but as Becky mentioned, it doesn't fill the fashion need.  What about art for art's sake?  For instance, I'm about to embark on a new creation that will be a cowl/scarf that imitates the Northern Lights.  It might only add a little warmth and the tech really is only for decoration.  However, I might argue that fashion is often based on beauty or appeal rather than function.  So, perhaps there is room for the art side of tech.  I know many of you come from an engineering background.  What are your considerations when designing something that will be seen, meaning it will be visible to the user or other people?  Do you consider wearables to be worth your time and effort? 

I know many of you come from an engineering background.

Yes, but also with a fondness for several arts.

What are your considerations when designing something that will be seen, meaning it will be visible to the user or other people? 

* Either remove all the tech from eyesight

* Or pronounce the electronics so much that it becomes the form or art itself, like the creations of analog design guru Jim Williams (see the temperature sensor at right, and bow-like construction at the left

Do you consider wearables to be worth your time and effort?

Nope. I'm very conservative here but I think in most cases they're wasting batteries and most wearable tech will wear down so fast in usage that it's not worth the effort to make a complete design. Conductive thread is doing very bad electrically and mechanically compared to connectors and cables, and ESD is a problem completely neglected in most wearables designs. I see them more as a gimmick / fashion item. That's not the kind of technology that I enjoy designing.

LOL 

You got me there! I was thinking down the alley of Arduinos and blinky LEDs and - more sophisticated - fitbits. Sliderules never crossed my mind.....

Reminds me of the guy that told me that if you had a circular slide rule you weren't hot at MIT... Although circular slide rules were more sophisticated, you didn't have the rectangular pocket that you got with 'normal' slide rules, which you could hang from your waistbelt. So having more sophisticated stuff meant you were not 'hip' enough because you're not recognizable as a tech student!

John, oooh, Pythagoras.  So interesting what you said about music, and I'll be sure to check it out as I would like to hear the differences that you described.  I sure hope you are doing some consulting work with companies to help spread the word about well-rounded education and its value.  We need that!  I was especially thinking of how public schools have drastically cut the arts.  Between so many standards to be followed, even the teachers who fight for this type of education are having a tough time implementing it.  That could lead me into a whole discussion on Creative Economy, but, for now I'll stick with the wearables.  Have you done any projects marrying your Pythagoras love with electronics? 

Ha ha!, this whole conversation makes me wonder what are the visible signs of a techie.  People used to have big pouches for their phones back in the day, and  I know I used to wear a pager. Circular slide rules sound cool.  I've never seen one!

Leslie Birch wrote:

 

I sure hope you are doing some consulting work with companies to help spread the word about well-rounded education and its value.  We need that!  I was especially thinking of how public schools have drastically cut the arts.  Between so many standards to be followed, even the teachers who fight for this type of education are having a tough time implementing it.  That could lead me into a whole discussion on Creative Economy, but, for now I'll stick with the wearables.  Have you done any projects marrying your Pythagoras love with electronics? 

Well-rounded education falls on mostly deaf ears, so the best I can do it write comments like this when I can.  Cutting the arts is indeed foolish, because they're needed to develop the parts of the brain needed for other things.  Specifically, I've heard of studies that show that teaching music -- especially classical like Mozart -- develops the part of the brain needed for mathematics.  So if you want to improve your school's math scores, teach music as well.

   I learned both clarinet and keyboard (piano and organ) as a youth.  I'm not talented musically, but the training was great at developing the parts of the brain needed for microcoding and sequential logic design.

   I designed and built some fun electronic organ stuff when I was an undergrad, like a polyphonic keyboard scanner with switches made of paper clips and digital debounce using a 256x4 bit SRAM, and a polyphonic tone generator based on square waves using a "top octave" IC to generate the highest octaves.  This was mostly 74LSxx logic with wire-wrap construction.  The tone generator can now be easily done using a DSP or ARM Cortex-M4, but the keyboard scanner was a decent design.  When I'm retired I'd like to get the shell of a large non-working electronic organ with full pedal board and make a keyboard scanner for it, and send the results out as a MIDI stream to various synthesizers.  It's pretty easy technically -- the hard part is finding a place to put the thing :-)

Leslie Birch wrote:

 

Ha ha!, this whole conversation makes me wonder what are the visible signs of a techie.  People used to have big pouches for their phones back in the day, and  I know I used to wear a pager. Circular slide rules sound cool.  I've never seen one!

In the movie Dr. Strangelove you can see the title character using a circular slide rule to make some calculations.  Victor is right about having a circular slide rule making you an outcast among outcasts.  Seymore Cray talked about this in a very amusing lecture about his life and work.

Hi John,

You are so right.  I always have music playing when I do just about any work.  The sound helps to keep the mind relaxed and sometimes you get inspired by the overall ambiance to come up with even better ideas.  From my observations, almost all talented scientists and engineers either are avid music players or listeners or both.

DAB

Hi Leslie,

Unfortunately the cool people have decided to denigrate geek tech, so many have abandoned the traditional visible signs to prevent ridicule.

It is an interesting turn to see them all now showing off their IPADs, which I consider mostly technically useless.  Of did I miss some useful app.  Nope, I don't think so.

I mean if all you use it for is dead birds, its just a fancy etchisketch.

You can still identify geeks, but you have to look for the less than obvious signs.

I am not sure that another round of geek tech accessories will make it until we make the cool crowd think it was their idea first.

Or we can all become antisocial like me and do what we want.  I never did care much for public opinion myself.

DAB

Seymour Cray:  Whats all this about Gallium Arsenide? - YouTube

This link refers to that conversation about sliderules. It was indeed Seymour Cray who said that.

I'm afraid I only have some small experience with guitar, but I certainly appreciate music.  Had a chance to look up Circle of Fifths and tuning options.  Lots to see and hear, and I actually liked the uneven quality of some of it.  I'm sure some are still having fun experimenting with it.   Anyway, I was reminded of a particular piano at Drexel, that I think you will appreciate.

Leslie Birch wrote:

 

I'm afraid I only have some small experience with guitar, but I certainly appreciate music.  Had a chance to look up Circle of Fifths and tuning options.  Lots to see and hear, and I actually liked the uneven quality of some of it.  I'm sure some are still having fun experimenting with it.   Anyway, I was reminded of a particular piano at Drexel, that I think you will appreciate.

There's a big difference between listening to Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier with well-temperament compared to the equal temperament used by modern pianos.  With well-temperament, the dissonances are harsher and the resolutions more relaxed and different key signatures feel quite different.  It's important to play historic music with the temperament for which it was written -- the software was written to match the hardware, after all.

That Drexel piano reminds me of the clavichord, a wonderfully simple and subtle keyboard instrument capable of vibrato.  Unfortunately, the quiet clavichord was made obsolete by the ambient noise level brought about by the Industrial Revolution, which gets worse all the time.

Leslie Birch wrote:

 

I'm afraid I only have some small experience with guitar, but I certainly appreciate music.  Had a chance to look up Circle of Fifths and tuning options.  Lots to see and hear, and I actually liked the uneven quality of some of it.  I'm sure some are still having fun experimenting with it.   Anyway, I was reminded of a particular piano at Drexel, that I think you will appreciate.

There's a big difference between listening to Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier with well-temperament compared to the equal temperament used by modern pianos.  With well-temperament, the dissonances are harsher and the resolutions more relaxed and different key signatures feel quite different.  It's important to play historic music with the temperament for which it was written -- the software was written to match the hardware, after all.

That Drexel piano reminds me of the clavichord, a wonderfully simple and subtle keyboard instrument capable of vibrato.  Unfortunately, the quiet clavichord was made obsolete by the ambient noise level brought about by the Industrial Revolution, which gets worse all the time.