From thinking to making: weaving technology in everyday life | Despina Papadopoulos | TEDxVilnius

A leader in the wearable technology and e-textiles world, Despina developed her first “wearable” in 1995 as part of her MA thesis project at NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program. Since then she has developed a wide range of wearable technology projects and solutions, including mBracelet for NCR (which presaged e-payments), fabrickit (an open source modular system that facilitates the construction of wearable projects). She also developed click sneaks, love&hug jackets, and day-for-night (an homage to Paco Rabanne).
In her talk Despina takes us through what the future of wearable technology holds for us.

Despina Papadopoulos is the founder of Principled Design / Studio 5050, a systems design and strategy studio specializing in wearable technologies, building prototypes, and working with organizations to introduce innovation at the intersection of social structure and technological possibility. She has been named one of New York City's "Six Most Interesting Women in Tech."

Despina is a professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and founding faculty at SVA’s MFA in Design for Social Innovation Program. Despina has lectured internationally on the relationship between design, technology and ethics, including at CHI, Tate Modern, Smart Fabrics, the Jan Van Eyck Academy and the Ivrea Interaction Design Institute. Her work has been featured in publications around the world and exhibited in major museum shows, including the V&A in London, the Holon Design Museum in Holon, Israel, the Walker Art Center in Minnesota.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Why do we make things?

I guess to express, share ideas,

channel energy,

manifest, visualize connections.

We make different things
depending on the skills we have,

or the ones we want to acquire
in the process of making something new.

Depending on the availability of materials
that we have around us

or reversely, because of the materials
that we want, that we imagine,

and the ideas related to them
simply do not exist.

Well, for the past few months,
I have been making knots.

I take conductive threads

and I knot in-between them sensors,

resistors, micro controllers, LEDs,

and in the process I'm also experimenting

with the kind of mechanical connections
that can develop

to string these together.

For years now, I have been
absolutely intrigued by Quipus.

Quipus are these very interesting
artifacts from the 15th century

that the Incas used as a very complex,

3 dimensional system of communication.

It was a recording device
that you could wrap up

and send to someone.

You could actually feel it.

It was tactile so you can
even see it in the dark.

And sometimes it was also worn,

which goes to show us
that wearable technology

is not so recent.

And I'm not trying to interpret
this very complex

and intriguing system of threads

into a 21st century
wearable technology system.

But why am I really tying myself in knots?

Well let's go back a little bit,

not as far back as the 15th century,

but let's say about 20 years ago.

I've just completed
a masters in philosophy,

and after spending so much time

reading and experiencing ideas

in a way that to me was very physical,

I had this deep desire to figure out:

how can I make ideas physical?

How can I communicate process and insight

in an embodied way?

So I decided that I wanted
to make philosophy machines.

So I go back to school and I study

a bit more design and technology.

Now technology,
the way we understand it today

had just started creeping

into more and more parts
of our every day life,

so it's not about
washing machines anymore.

And into more and more
channels of communication,

so it's not just about
the telephone anymore.

So I experiment a lot
with interactive video,

and with micro controllers,
tiny computers really.

New tools give us new possibilities
of expression.

And one day, I'm at my school,

and I leaf through this book,

it's a technical book
on how to program micro controllers,

and I come up with an application

about infrared

and I become absolutely fascinated
with the idea

that there is this spectrum
that's around us

which is invisible to us,

but through which we can communicate.

So I decided that I want to make
a pair of jackets

that communicates via infrared.

So I go and make a pair of jackets

and my jackets when they meet each other

they transmit a very particular signal,

and they listen for the same.

And there is only one other pair

that's out there in the world,

and when the two meet,

when they're in front of each other,

line of sight, they start chirping.

They make the same sounds
that crickets do

when they are trying to mate.

And they have little LEDs that blink

in the front and in the back,

so there is also a public acknowledgement

of this magical encounter.

What I really was interested was to see

how we can make the visible invisible,

and how we can give materiality to ideas.

In this case, explore ideas around
non-verbal communications,

but also express the quest for the other,
the perfect other,

as written in Plato's symposium.

It is possible to create artifacts

that delivers such narratives,

that transmit a point of view
on what is valuable,

what it means to be human
and connect with others?

But I also wanted to subvert

established notions of what things do,

and in the process, question,
and maybe even alter,

the relationship we have with technology.

So, what did I do?

Well, I made another pair of jackets.

And this time, this pair of jackets lit up

when two people meet,

actually it really just lights up.

Actually when two people hug.

You know when you get a good hug?

And it feels really warm,
and you feel this energy?

Well, I wanted to show that energy.

And then I made a pair of sneakers.

But my sneakers,
they were not normal sneakers.

They actually sounded
like high heels when you walk.

So imagine that you're walking
down the street

and you hear behind you high heels.

Inevitably you'll conjure up
the image of a girl,

you'll think of someone
wearing high heels.

Actually she is quite comfortable,

and she can run if she needs to.

The funny thing is
that when you wear those high heels

you actually start walking
as if you wore high heels,

which goes to show you
how easy it is to trick our mind.

Well, what I mostly wanted to do

was to explore and understand:

do such interventions change

how we understand the space around us,

how we connect with others,

the expectations we have
over material reality.

and therefore a material culture ?

And it was very important to me,
as it still is,

that what I made actually worked,

that I had an idea,
and that I could buck it up,

that there was
an embodied physical reality

to that instant that I wanted to create.

The things that we use
shape what we think,

what we want,

and in turn what we want
to continue making.

It turned out that
the wearable environment,

or what we still kind of tentatively
call wearable technology,

was this perfect space for me to bridge

my underlying desire to explore
systems of communication

and how technology affects
our everyday experience,

and our human experience
as embodied living human beings.

What we wear,

or that we wear anything at all,

is very much at the core of this intimate

and intricate place
of what makes us human beings.

Modesty, power, control,

affiliation, comfort, and adaptability,

the ability to actually thrive
in hostile environments,

humor, delight, and of course, expression.

These are the things that make us human.

Our clothes have always been
about technology

which is one of the reasons
I dislike using the term:

"smart fabrics"

wool, cotton, linen,

they're plenty smart from the get go.

And in this intimate space
that sits on our body,

it is easy to see how technology

and the things that we wear and carry

changes how we relate to the world.

The pocket watch, another early
wearable technology,

changed the relationship
with time forever,

as well as notions of efficiency,

punching a card,

how late it is acceptable
to show up in a meeting.

Imagine if we arranged this meeting
and we all had to depend

on the clock on the Times Square,

right?

And the walkman changed

our relationship with space forever.

In fact, in 1979, critics,
cultural critics, called the walkman

"a technology for this generation

that has nothing left to talk about,"

because now you can get
into you little space bubble

and you can experience
the world in a different way.

Not unlike in the 1930s

when the zipper started
to become quite popular in clothing

and moral critics were shocked,
and they felt:

"here is a sure sign of moral decay."

Because now you can take
your pants off much faster.

(Laughter)

And you thought that clothes
and technology

have no ideology behind them.

But what's interesting, is that,

when we think about codes and systems,

we don't necessarily think of textiles.

Even though our textiles
and the clothes that we wear

are packed with codes and signifiers.

Even though, in fact,
the first programmable machine

was a Jacquard loom.

And we already saw how the Incas Quipus

had binary code and algorithmic design

in the very parts of them.

As my own work evolved

and I kept weaving technology in ideas

and ideas in technology,

I realized that the very act of making,

this translational process,

of turning ideas into wearable artifacts,

led me to investigate the affordances

of the materials themselves.

A critical conversation
started emerging from me

between what materials could do,

or more often could not do,

and the shape ideas could take.

Finding solutions on how
to weave a conductive fabric

how to merge clothes with technology,

how to develop a new connector,

became for me this metaphor,

and it started outlining what is possible.

Finding solutions became as exciting

as trying to manifest ideas themselves.

The tools and the expression

started edging closer together.

We can after all make only the things

that our tools let us make.

And I started experiencing what I now call

the "synesthetic materiality of ideas."

All my work, the clothes,

the system that started emerging from it,

even the battery issues,
the wiring, the connectors,

they became this brilliant metaphor,
this open question:

what do we want to do with technology?

What does it mean
to have the self quantified?

For that matter, to have a self at all?

Do we want it to be transparent
so we can have control

and fix it when it's broken?

Or do want it to be seamlessly integrated

and have it run in the background?

But then, when does the background
become foreground?

If technology, wearable technology,

becomes part of our everyday life,

what we wrap ourselves with

as it looks as in the process of doing,

then what kind of version of self
do we want to promote?

What kind of values?

What kind of idea of being?

What kind of relationships?

How can we control the narrative
of technology and relationships?

How do we make sure
that we can open up a space

for humanizing technology,

where value flows in all directions,
and not just to some?

How do we make sure
that we take care of each other,

of our environment,
and everyone who inhabits it?

What we wear, from this thin film

between ourselves and our interactions,

our intentions even,

it is our interface.

What do we want it to be like
in 5, 10, 20 years from now?

We can make it be.

We have the tools now more than ever.

In fact, we are making that future now.

20 years ago,

I imagined it as playful,
engaging, codified but human.

We can make the things
we want to see in the world.

We can build the future
that we want to wear and live in.

And we can demand it. Thank you.

(Applause)