Emotional exchange: embodiment and creativity in wearable technology

Symposium:

• ISEA2009: 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Tracking Emotions

• Emotional exchange: embodiment and creativity in wearable technology

• Susan Elizabeth Ryan

Venue(s):

• Waterfront Hall, Belfast, Ireland

• Abstract

  In Postemotional Society Stjepan Mestrovíc proposes that postmodern social response is fried by compassion fatigue. Bombarded by media’s exaggerated reports of violence and terror, we are manipulated by second-hand, mediated passions. Mestrovíc describes a world in which quasi-emotions are culled like historical data from the past by media, which trains populations to respond to current events via older, and predictable, symbolic emotions.

  The postmodern mentality recycles and repackages – another Woodstock, another Great Depression, another Star Trek movie. All leverage our emotional memories of earlier cultural events. While Mestrovíc has his critics, the syndrome he describes is familiar and he asks an important question: how do we revive our emotional resources? One way to do this might be to stimulate emotions in unfamiliar contexts – like interactive garments that redirect our focus from the representation of emotion to its complex embodied processes.

Category:

• Paper