The wearable concept (or wearable technology) basically deals with the application of technological developments to fashion and design, creating body technology, technological clothing or wearable technology for functional or aesthetic purposes. The wearables cover countless developments and artifacts that bring different themes to the dialogue through: body extensions, deformations, monitoring, gears, prostheses, clothing, ... among others.

 

Thus applying the wearable to fashion, it already begins to generate discussion between the history of this branch of design and the connotations acquired by the use of technological accessories on the head. For Marshall McLuhan, the media are extensions of human beings, prostheses that project beyond their bodily limitations, we see in this way the possibility of wearable as a technological device and fashion, because fashion inevitably says much more than being on the agenda with the aesthetic trends of the market; the garments and accessories we use every day are in the first instance political and social agencies within human groups, creating acceptance, empathy or rejection in the different communities; that is, they generate patterns and structures within the collective unconscious that manifest their identity, security, status, power among other characteristics within the social system.

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We begin the research and conceptual process with the idea of ​​developing a wearable for the upper body, head or face. Analyzing what the head represents and focusing on the face we see that it is the part of the body that is most exposed to society. Through the face we express emotions, expose or hide identity, it is the main social agency, evoking all kinds of reactions to the other in the development of social interaction, allowing or denying access to the public and private. The face humanizes the subject in a certain way, that is; socially it is accepted or not a person by his face and his similarity with the other to generate empathy or pleasure from there that people with deformities or physical variations are taboos or marginalized within communities. In this way the accessories and the wearable play metaphorically for or against the idea of ​​identity, boosting or hacking it like a filter before presenting it to the other.

 

Walter Benjamin postulated the idea of ​​sensorium as: "the configuration of the senses next to the nervous system, related to technology and the devices with which man interacts, relates to himself, to the other and to his environment." basically, like technology and scientific developments, they configure structures in the personal and collective unconscious, which give special characteristics of interaction and identity in the face of a specific context or chronological period. A wearable can be fashion, haute couture and point to aesthetics evoking in a provocative way the aesthetic and philosophical questions of the 21st century. Well, fashion, like art, is a record in time and space about the evolutionary processes of societies and about the very idea of ​​being, of social agency and power. In this way the accessories are an extension of the human mind in space.

 

In the proposal for the upper part of the body or head and picking up the concepts discussed we think about the identity ritual, and the construction of a character, asking the question, what makes us human?

We consider speculating about the future and the limits of the body, beauty, technology and the self. Based on the concepts that we relate to the face, we focus on exploring and generating a reflection on the cultural and emotional impacts that cutting-edge science and technology have on the redesign of the body through wearables (implants, prostheses, extensions, helmets, masks, headdresses, etc.) using art, design and technology around the idea of ​​the face.

 

We focus on the sensory since the head is where most senses are concentrated, and the idea is raised where the device can play two roles: enhancer, facilitator or, on the contrary, obliterate, obstruct, deny or replace the image of the character; denying identity and transmuting to the pole of the nonhuman.

 

We propose the idea of ​​using haute couture and technology, suggesting the future of fashion and body explorations, to work on the idea of ​​how we understand the space by connecting or disappearing from it. Proposing a dichotomy between the public and the private, protection or display, using the wearable as a metaphor between the future of the human mind and the perception of identity, using technology as an extension of the mind, to expand in space beyond human capabilities

 

Expanding the human through perception and the sensorium in the inhabited space we propose to perform a headdress as a symbol of haute couture, fashion and as an ethical element, playing metaphorically with the juxtaposition of lights and textures to enhance or deny the idea of identity and creating another subject.