SoftShare: A Wearable Surveillance Tool

Abstract

<p>The interactive art project SoftShare allows the user to manipulate soft sensors that are made of conductive yarns and fabrics. This wearable e-textile project emphasizes sensorial aspects of surveillance. Following a set of simple instructions, the person wearing this garment is capable of creating a short sensorial travel diary. These actions of responding and recording “out in the field” of the urban environment are a method of examining surveillance as a multi-faceted dynamic involving embodied perceptions of space. Inhabiting for a time what is essentially an electronic device allows the user to participate in monitoring a space within which, because of the pervasiveness of surveillance in urban spaces, they are also being monitored. What are the effects of surveillance technologies and ubiquitous computing on material and tactile experience? How is identity and tacit knowledge affected and transformed by the new fluid social spaces that are characteristic of embedded surveillance technologies? Embodied experience is always an element of processes of surveillance or use of locative media. The tangible media of conductive textiles is employed to explore participation and communication within new surveillance spaces.</p>