Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

Skin Series is a new media artwork that explores the future of human perception, and how emerging possibilities in wearable technology can reinvent our relationship with our environment. The work takes inspiration from the scientific field of sensory ecology as well as the semiotic theory of Umwelt developed by Jakob von Uexkull and Thomas Sebeok, which investigates the communication and signification of organisms within their environment. Using the skin as an interface and venue for experimentation, Skin Series proposes wearable prosthetics that extend our sensory worlds by way of technological intervention. Through this, the work explores the co-evolution of man and technology, framing the two as a hybrid communication system, and draws attention to the role of environmental influence on our sensory perception that, in turn, changes our behavior. The series currently consists of two wearable pieces: the Electric Skin and the Sonic Skin.

The Electric Skin

The Electric Skin is made up of a matrix of custom-designed capacitive touch sensors that act as probes that reach out from the user into the environment. Electrical fluctuations in the environment sensed through the antennas trigger modularly designed control circuits to vibrate on the wearer’s body.

The Sonic Skin

The Sonic Skin contours the human form with a directional sound wall generated from a chest plate of matrixed ultrasonic transducers. The journey of the sound projected from the body is audible to the audience and illustrates in real-time the physical relationship between wearer and environment.