Shimmer Aesthetic: sensory networked wearables
Creators: name: MCMILLAN, Caroline
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 330315
subject: Textile and fashion design

description: Designing wearable technologies according to an aesthetic principle based on the shimmer of life challenges the dominant mode of representation in networked technology development—killer applications. The historical moment of the Internet of Things (IoT) provides narratives around an unbridled enthusiasm for monitoring applications distinguished by their invisibility. In slide-from-view operations that champion the ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) development paradigm, the disappearing computation that takes effect on the periphery of human perception is a central concern. The discipline of wearables now has concerns and obligations related to the extractive logic of personal data capture for automated applications. Focusing on where literature and practice overlook perception and agency in data sourcing and visualisation, I bring attention to deep ecological ethical empathy during early-stage design.

This research investigates the ways political and ethical ideologies are encoded in the aesthetic principles of networked computation. I question how the shimmer of life might reframe the ideas that automated technologies embody as guiding aesthetic principles for design. In a field of predominantly visual and screen-based form and experiences, I ask what reclaiming a bodily, multisense orientation around the data wearables informate might otherwise afford. A feminist epistemology is put into practice and informs design as this research seeks to re-engineer digital data display for IoT-connected fashion wearables. Shimmer, as a sensorial lure, provides the point of departure for a mode of textile surface design and sense-making attuned to the durations of sentient patterning. 

This thesis argues that to arrive at a valuable understanding of the aesthetic and cognitive potential of the bodily senses in wearables design and their cultures, gazing beyond notions mired in Western aesthetics traditions is crucial. I present a critical theoretical lineage and non-Western epistem-onto-logical intelligence system, by way of example. A critical design-practice approach annexed by value-sensitive design changes the norms of existing technology development paradigms. Reflecting on how we smell, feel and think through ways of knowing ecological ethical essence in design, I introduce the aesthetic principle of shimmer to the study of wearable technology design. Theoretical, artistic and literary strategies of speculation engage the moral imagination in methods that form the starting point for sensory design interventions to surface untold narratives and rearrange technology practice conditions through the fashion-led sampling process of wearables artefacts. Sensory networked wearables encompass the co-creation of two innovations: the AURA series and Live:scape BLOOM. Participant workshops and public performances of the resulting innovations visceralise the whole-body and cultural dynamics of how people clothe themselves in IoT-connected garments. In producing wearables as fashion, data-adorned bodies are reflexive subjects that anticipate future use.

I present several central ideas, as reflected throughout this thesis. I show that the olfactory sense lends narrativity that enables framed experience in stories told for robust design envisioning. Smelling draws out collective values, fundamental desires, potentials, limitations, and risks of IoT-connected wearables by engaging and amplifying emotionalised responses. I develop olfactory-led design strategies that contribute contemplative spaces to journey through and bring forth a spatial and navigational sense perception for a social and environmental attunement that is novel to networked digital data display. I show how this idea plays a significant role in making objects desirable and assessing an artefact’s physical and emotional assurance. Through the cultural sustainability of the fashion adornment tradition of haute couture, I also show that aesthetic principles of conspicuous perceptibility lead sensorial invitation. I contribute tactile and fragrant digital displays animated with live-streamed sentient data sources, making for naturalised automated systems that lure and hold attention. I also show that the body, adorned in data for one’s pleasure and the pleasure of others, becomes a node of phatic conviviality, where people share intimate yarns accordant to the dynamics and sense-making of communal interaction. In critically integrating the untapped bodily senses, the design examples in this thesis establish ethical essence as a multimodal art; ways of feeling, smelling, and thinking through design that comes to life across an entire research process. Grounded in these results, I offer strategies for designers seeking to learn how future design, care and automated systems might allow us to shimmer.