Hannah Perner-Wilson, high/low tech wearables and textiles hacker
Choosing a piece from Hannah Perner-Wilson’s repertoire was really difficult because I think she makes some really interesting work. One of the articles linked mentioned the propensity of gloves as an area of study for physical computists(?) and I saw that reflected in her work in a really fun way but I ended up choosing this really simple project and more “functional” project.
I find this piece of work incredibly interesting for three questions/points of explorations it proposes for me: interface, surveillance and ownership.
So I did the readings in a different order, and I read the manifesto first and I think a lot about the reasons we as humans often have a little bit of nostalgia towards analog technology that didn’t have as many augmentative agents as we do now, it also didn’t have as complicated and developed forms of tracking us. It wasn’t an absorbing mode of social media. And what fascinates me about this project is the turning of this sort of digital horror to a self made system. It is interesting to me, reading her process in trying to make this phone functional for her and detailing the many interface problems it presents.
It’s functional, but not perfectly so. It’s inconvenient, but in the way that’s only noticeable through the passage of time and the development of new technologies and thorough interface agents.