Valerie Bugmann.
Independent Artist
http://www.valeriebugmann.com/
Mobile applications based on touch for theater and prosthetics
About the Research
The Drama of Digital Communication with a Human Touch
The Drama of Digital Communication with a Human Touch is particularly focused on the study and development of personal wireless communication networks that use the body as a node by converting it into an interface. This takes place by using its conductive characteristics for the transmission of digital information through the skin: signifying the transformation of the body into a wire.
Dealing with these emergent technologies our bodies and our systems of communication find themselves in constant re-construction, giving birth to novel social interaction behaviours mediated or originated by this technology. These unique manifestations talk about the way in which our body lives out "a kind of new drama" through its interaction with the world. Perhaps touch can be extended in new unexpected ways, and the body embarks into a new exciting experience of itself and of the world. Emergent communication technologies have a large impact on our daily communication and aesthetic practices, implying new potentials and transformations in our way of thinking, relating and conceiving of the world and our-selves. With the ambition of ubiquitous computing, the moving out of pre-conceived spaces of interaction towards the everyday, new necessities and approaches appear as new challenges and opportunities at the moment of the design and this design's final introduction into our complex everyday physical world. This investigaton and experimentation with extensions of the body may offer new possibilities in the design in areas such as prosthetics and rehabilitation of neurological dissorders.
About the Researcher
Valerie Bugmann finalized her studies in Art and Electronic Media at the University Los Andes in Bogotá in 2002. From 2002 to 2005 she realized her masters studies in Art & Technology at the University of Chalmers and the IT-University in Gothenburg, Sweden. Currently she lives and works in Zurich where she carries out her PhD research that deals about the impact of wearable technology on prosthetic design, theater and society at the HGKZ/Planetary Collegium.
In cooperation with
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