SKIN SERIES
2016 -
Skin Series is a series of artistic and experimental exploration in the developing realm of wearable technology. My interest lies in the epidermis, the largest organ on the human body - the boundary between the internal and external, self and other - and how new technologies can blur, manipulate and reinvent that boundary. This is a continuation of my research for the installation Living Devices, that investigated the boundaries between life and non-life.
SKIN SERIES
2016 / 2018 / 2021
Skin Series is a series of speculative wearable devices that explores animal perception through embodiment and human agency. Referencing biologist Jakob von Uexkull’s theory of the umwelt (lifeworld), the series draws on philosophical discussions of the lived experience, where the body becomes an arena and tether between organism and reality. Reality unfolds with behavior, informed by the perceptual body schema of the individual. The work asks: what role can technological intervention play within this dynamic? The series answers this question by challenging the humanist body construct in favor of an open, fluid, and elastic phenomenological body. Animalistic sensory capacities are mapped onto the human form through custom designed wearables. These technological bodies, through performative behavior by the wearer, sets into motion a transitional process of becoming other, a techno-animism.
ELECTRIC SKIN
2016
The invisible landscape of electromagnetic signals has been fundamentally transformed by the development and proliferation of electronic technology. More omnipresent than ever before, this imperceptible field has become embedded in the fabric of contemporary life — surrounding us, passing through us, and shaping the environments we inhabit. As our habitat continues to evolve with technological infrastructures, a deeper consideration emerges: are we, too, prone to change with it? And if so, what does it mean for the boundaries of the body to shift in response?
Electric Skin takes these questions as its point of departure and proposes a wearable that extends the sensory capacity of the skin — not as prosthesis, but as perceptual transformation. By translating electrostatic flux from the surrounding environment into tactile sensation, the work explores whether the body might stretch and bend to meet the external architecture of technological signaling.
The device consists of two integrated components: a matrix of omnidirectional antennas that function as sensors and probes, reaching out into the electromagnetic field, and a corresponding array of vibration motors that deliver this information as direct stimulation to the skin of the wearer. In this way, the boundary between body and environment becomes a negotiated threshold — one that is redrawn through technological intervention.
Electric Skin
Photography by Harauld Sextus
2019
Electric Skin, modeled by artist, photography by Harauld Sextus, 2019
SONIC SKIN
2018
The body has never been a passive receiver of sound — it is always already immersed in a sonic field that is both inhabited and produced. Sonic Skin takes this reciprocal relationship as its foundation, and treats the body as an active emitter and processor within this field. Borrowing from the perceptual logics of the bat and the whale, the wearable projects directional sound from the contours of the body like a sonic armor. Here, the body does not simply move through an acoustic environment, it generates one, and in so doing, begins to know of itself and its reality differently. The environment does not change, but the relationship between body and environment changes.
The performative dimension of the work makes this transformation legible. As the wearer's body shift in orientation, the transformation and journey of the sound is audible to the audience, externalizing perceptual relationship between wearer and environment into a shared, public event. Through this behavior, technology does not merely extend the body, but also composes its form.
The 2018 prototype was funded by the UNArt Center in Shanghai.
Sonic Skin
Photography by Harauld Sextus
2019
Sonic Skin, modeled by artist, photography by Harauld Sextus, 2019