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Embodled Interactions: Towards An Exploration of The Expressive and Narrative Potential of Performance Costume Through Wearable Technologies
Embodled Interactions: Towards An Exploration of The Expressive and Narrative Potential of Performance Costume Through Wearable Technologies
Scene
Volume 2 Numbers 1 & 2
© 2014 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/scene.2.1-2.179_1
Sofia Pantouvaki
Aalto University
Embodied interactions:
Towards an exploration of
the expressive and narrative
potential of performance
costume through wearable
technologies
Abstract Keywords
The use of smart materials and wearable electronics has rapidly expanded in the field costume
of fashion, introducing new interactive qualities of surfaces, materials and garments. embodied interactions
In fashion garments, the performative environment functions as an abstract site for wearable technologies
experimentation, expression and communication of the wearer through the intelligent meaning-making
garment. However, there is still limited use of embodied technologies in the field of potential
performance costume for text-based and music-based performance, with the exception performance
of integrated lighting technologies, currently broadly used in musical performance. narrative
This article provides a critical review of specific examples of technology-led garments
in live performance, and uses a specific fragment from the Athens 2004 Olympic
Games Opening Ceremony as a case study to highlight how technologies embedded
in costume can create interactive interfaces between the body of the performer and
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Sofia Pantouvaki
the environment – the space, the other performers, the audience – becoming a trans-
mitter and receiver of emotions, experiences and meanings in innovative ways. By
analysing this case, as well as by posing questions, this article aims at generating a
discourse on the expressive and narrative potential of the use of intelligent materials
and embodied technologies within the creative practice of costume design.
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Embodied interactions
experiments explore the performing body and its spatial dimension, through
the relationship between body and position or body and movement, as well
as the complex relationship between one performing body and other bodies
– the performers’ or the audience’s. Hence this considerable and broad body
of work focuses on interpretations of the body mainly within space and time,
leaving relatively unexplored the perspective of the technology-based perform-
ing body as a costumed body within a given narrative.
This article focuses on one type of wearable technologies – i.e. wearable
electronics – and investigates the notion of embodied interactions through elec-
tronic devices and circuits in costume in various areas of performance practice.
The term embodied interactions here addresses the interactive possibilities
provided by embedded technology through the costumed body. A brief over-
view of different examples of electronics embedded in performance costumes
serves to map the use of wearable technologies from the perspective of costume
design. In order to discuss wearable electronics as new costume design mate-
rials more thoroughly, light-related applications are investigated as one type
of current practice broadly used in musical performance. In these, however,
expressivity is limited to visual effect. Therefore, to highlight how technology-
led costume can enhance dramaturgy within a performance concept through
embodied interactions, an early example of costume designed for large-scale
performance from the Opening Ceremony of Athens 2004 Olympic Games
is examined from a phenomenological and concept–analysis perspective. By
analysing this case, this article aims at generating a discourse on the potential
for characters, technologies and bodies to come together through the inter-
pretive and meaning-making artistic processes of costume design, proposing
new options for expression and narrative through costume.
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Embodied interactions
of the experimental Gutai art movement,5 created an iconic garment for the 5. The Gutai Group, a post-
World-War-II art group
– then yet inexistent – field of wearable technology: the Electric Dress (1956). in Japan whose name
This pioneering technology garment was an early type of fusion of technology means ‘embodiment’,
and the body, expressed in a sculptural form consisting of electrical devices. were the first to carry
out ‘happenings’ and
It was designed as a kimono-style outfit made of electrical wires and more performance-based
than 200 light bulbs and short neon tubes, hand-painted in primary colours. works internationally.
The lighting devices, whose electrical circuits and wiring ‘form[ed] a kind of 6. The dress,
weaving’, would ‘turn on and off alternately’ (documenta 12 2007), creat- reconstructed in 1986,
ing a bright colourful spectacle. The Gutai had an embodied approach to art has been exhibited in
various retrospective
and their works incorporated physical actions playfully; the Electric Dress was exhibitions, including
shown in the ‘2nd Gutai Art Exhibition’ in 1956 where Tanaka wore her full- 2007 ‘documenta 12’ in
Kassel, mounted on a
body costume ‘in the tradition of the Japanese marriage ceremony’ (Schimmel life-size steel armature;
1998: 28f). As Paul Schimmel notes, ‘Tanaka began to envision Electric Dress in these presentations
1954, when she outlined in a small notebook a remarkably prophetic connec- seem to lack the
performative power
tion between electrical wiring and the physiological systems that make up the of the garment and its
human body’ (Schimmel 1998: 28f).6 – almost dangerous –
In the late twentieth century, the vast majority of explorations of technological features
when embodied on the
technology-based performance involve the body, its expression and its move- artist.
ment in relation to space and performance context, concentrating on spatial
7. See, for example, the
qualities of the body per se and the notion of virtuality,7 and putting aside seminal technology-
or even ignoring the contribution of costuming. Embodied technologies in based dance practice
of Merce Cunningham
performance at the turn of the twenty-first century include a large variety of experimenting
options and systems that range from advanced motion tracking to interac- between the visual and
tive video displays and wearable computing ‘miniaturized, embedded, wire- the technological in the
early 1990s.
less […] worn on, and warmed by, the body, enhancing abilities to transport,
store, communicate, and modify personal data’, as in the work of Suzan Kozel 8. A music festival
inspired by the
(2007: 270). It is therefore of great interest today to investigate how and where Woodstock Music
wearable technologies interrelate and connect, not only to the performing and Arts Fair in 1969
body, but to and through the costumed performing body. and organized to
commemorate its 25th
The use of wearable technologies has been popular in costumes for musi- anniversary.
cal performance on mainstream stage. A few well-known predecessors to
9. Bono used this black
electronics involve wearable electrical devices: Michael Jackson’s costume leather jacket in the
designed by Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins for the futuristic 3D sci-fi encore of the show.
film Captain EO (Coppola 1986) was decorated with embedded lights, which
would light up during action and dance scenes. As for live performance, in
1994, Red Hot Chili Peppers performed wearing headgear resembling light
bulbs at Woodstock ’94.8 Red Hot Chili Peppers, widely known as ‘often
appearing nearly naked in photographs and in their performances’ (Perone
2005: 75), created an impressive light-based stage effect in full costume during
the first song of their show. The bulb-headgear, literally lit like a bulb, aimed
at a visual impression at long distance, creating a rhythmical connection
between music and the performers’ movement, emphasized by the choreog-
raphy of the voluminous light heads.
In the age of digital technologies similar ideas have developed through
wearable electronics. Costumes in live music concerts enhance interac-
tive visual effects through embedded lasers and LED circuits and weara-
ble video displays, mediating real-time interaction. German-born engineer
and designer Moritz Waldemeyer, who collaborated with fashion designer
Hussein Chalayan for his pioneering laser and video dresses in 2007, created
in 2009 Bono’s Laser Jacket for the U2 360º Tour.9 The jacket featured 240
lasers that ‘extended Bono’s every move all the way across the audience’
(Waldemeyer n.d.). The concept and its effect through the performer’s
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Sofia Pantouvaki
10. Creative designers costumed body are expressed in different presentations of the garment, as
Francesca Rosella
and Ryan Genz, who
in this one:
develop interactive
garments using micro- The jacket offsets the tradition of the spotlight, which alienates the
electronics, see http://
cutecircuit.com/. performer from his crowd, as Bono is able to project his own light onto
thousands. It provides an interactive and personal element to the show
whereby individual members of the audience are literally connected to
Bono for an instant through a single laser beam. This creates an electri-
fying sense of the performer reaching out to his audience audibly, visu-
ally and spiritually.
(Fairs 2010: n.p.)
Some additional jackets were created for all members of the U2 group
by another creative team, CuteCircuit,10 and were used during the North
American leg of the 360º Tour in 2011. These were black and white jackets
with over 5000 pixels embedded in each one, displaying individually synchro-
nized lights able to recreate dynamic displays, patters and video in real time,
wirelessly controlled by the lighting design team (CuteCircuit n.d.). These
jackets would, again, create a rhythmical visual interaction between music and
light through electronics, through the group’s costumed bodies.
Similar outfits with embedded electronics have been used by various sing-
ers on the pop and rock music stage, including Rihanna at the American Music
Awards Show (2009) and at her 2010 UK show at O2 Arena, English pop
group Take That at their Progress Live Tour (2011), American rock band OK
Go (2010), Italian pop singer Laura Pausini for her Inedito World Tour (2011–
2012), Safura, the Azerbaijan performer for the 2010 Eurovision song contest,
the Austrian performers for the 2012 Eurovision song contest, as well as by
singers Katy Perry and Sarah Brightman, to name only a few. Of the numer-
ous garments further mention can be made to Laura Pausini’s skirt, advertised
by its creators as ‘the world’s largest soft wearable display ever used in live
performance’ (CuteCircuit 2011). This skirt extends in the space through its
4.5 metres length in silk chiffon incorporating thousands of LEDs in its lining,
creating a cascade of moving light above audience level. Visually orchestrated
with Pausini’s ballads, the effect in this case is poetic and signifies the singer
as a fairy tale character sitting on a swing and singing, harmoniously inte-
grated through her lit costume with the overall stage environment.
In the field of dance, costumes with wearable electronics are at the core of
experimental projects. Denmark-based research and innovation design team
Diffus have explored the potential of different combined wearable technolo-
gies such as sensor technologies, embodied optical fibres and electrolumines-
cent wires, and textile prints changing colour according to digitally controlled
input circuits in a number of projects using dance performance as a context for
experimentation: Cypherdusa (2007), Costume Choreography I (2007), Costume
Choreography II (2008) and 100 Dancers (2011). The technologies engaged
in these projects create interactive soundscapes or light patterns based on
the dancers’ motions and positions; the output produces real-time interac-
tions between performers, performers and space, and with the audience. The
specific creative team has approached lighting not only as a medium for visual
effects, but also as an immaterial textural material:
The way we use light is as patterns embedded into the texture of textiles;
this seems to reconciliate material and immaterial elements of the
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Embodied interactions
design into one tangible and evolving experience. When light becomes
texture in our costumes it also means that light becomes an integrated
part of the artefact, used for its abilities to create surface structures and
not necessarily for its affordance to produce ambient lighting effects.
(Diffus 2008: n.p.)
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Sofia Pantouvaki
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Embodied interactions
‘We are all made out of the same secret’12: The potential
of wearable technologies for poetic narratives through
performance costume
To explore the expressive and narrative potential of performance costume
through wearable technologies, it is important to research to a deeper level
how and what kind of notional connections can be developed between
wearable technologies and costumes within a performance context. In
support of this argument, a specific case is analysed in this section: a
1 minute and 30 second fragment from the Athens 2004 Olympic Games
Opening Ceremony featuring a pregnant woman at the ceremony section
entitled ‘The Book of Life’. The Athens 2004 Opening Ceremony, concep-
tually entitled Birthplace (relating to the Olympic Games returning to their
birthplace, Greece), was conceived, visualized and directed by Dimitris
Papaioannou. Papaioannou is a Greek multi-disciplinary artist, who has
trained and worked as a painter and comic artist, as well as a performer,
choreographer and director. His multi-talented personality was crucial in
conceiving the ceremony in its entirety. Prior to this large-scale commis-
sion, Papaioannou had been a founding member, director and choreog-
rapher of Edafos Dance Theatre Company (1986–2002), for which he had
often also designed. It was there, as he says, that he was able to balance his
‘overflowing emotional and intellectual approaches to life’: ‘As a painter,
this was the place to create images; as a comics artist, this was where to
tell my tales; and as a performer, this was the context in which to present
myself’ (Papaioannou n.d. a). His creative team for the Opening Ceremony
included fashion designer Sophia Kokosalaki as costume designer, as well as
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Sofia Pantouvaki
Figure 1: Extract from the Opening Ceremony Media Guide (Athens 2004 2004b: 47) (author’s personal
archive).
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Embodied interactions
appeared a flying Eros, ‘the unlimited force that brings opposites together and
in composition’ (Athens 2004 2004a: n.p.), accompanying two Lovers, a man
and a woman, to their act(ion) of connection. The next part of the ceremony,
entitled ‘Clepsydra’, continued the narrative through a chronological proces-
sion of images depicting stylized figures from different periods of the history
of art, symbolizing the passing of generations of people. This was emphasized
by introducing ‘Clepsydra’ through a Minoan Goddess of Fertility. And fertility
brings new life: The next section of the ceremony was entitled ‘The Book of Life’.
In this, the passage from past to future was signified by a figure of a Pregnant
Woman, ‘a symbol of new life and of hope for the future’ (Athens 2004: 48–49).
The short fragment from ‘The Book of Life’ provides a fascinating exam-
ple of a mystagogic performance creating meaning through the costumed
body that is wearing costume and technology. The storyboard of this scene
(Figures 1 and 2) provides the context:
1. Symbolizing the future, the last figure of the parade is a pregnant woman
(the first was the Fertility Goddess).
2. To the voice of Maria Callas ...
3. ... Eros removes her dress.
4. The pregnant woman steps down to the ground. (Athens 2004 2004b: 47)
Figure 2: Extract from the Opening Ceremony Media Guide (Athens 2004 2004b: 48) (author’s personal
archive).
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Sofia Pantouvaki
1. As the pregnant woman walks towards the water, the parade figures shed
their costumes (their history) and also step down to the ground.
2. The pregnant woman enters the water and her belly gently glows with
light.
3. Beneath the water is revealed an image evocative of a galaxy. It radiates
outwards from the pregnant woman ...
4. ... as all the performers enter the water. (Athens 2004: 48)
Figure 3: The pregnant woman from ‘The Book of Life’, Athens 2014 Olympic Games
Opening Ceremony. Photographer: Adam Pretty. © Getty Images.
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Embodied interactions
Figure 4: The pregnant woman reaching a moment of ecstasis, ‘The Book of Life’, Athens 2014 Olympic Games
Opening Ceremony. © Associated Press.
The elements of this short performance fragment, i.e. the movement, the 13. The author wishes to
lighting, the space, the music and the costume, are poetically orchestrated thank the unknown
reviewer of this article
in terms of both narrative rhythm and visual and spatial rhythm. In reading for this remark.
this ‘myth’ and the symbolisms embodied in the pregnant woman, ‘not
only from left to right, but at the same time vertically, from top to bottom’
(Lévi-Strauss 1978/2006: 40), the audience experiences this performance as
an embodied art form in a poetic as well as a sensual way, in which the
body is an affective object (Merleau-Ponty 1962/2010) while lighting shapes
and directs the spectator’s point of view. The scene can be characterized as
‘being poetically abstract and concretely poetic at the same time, or accord-
ing to what is more meaningful for us at the time’ (Kozel 2007: 181). The
light embedded in the woman’s belly here represents life, and the birth that
is to come. When the belly is lit (Figure 3), it transforms into transparent
skin that allows a very intimate view of a private and personal experience of
the female body. The effect of transparency through the performer’s body is
further enhanced by the skin colour of the costume and its soft and trans-
parent draped silk material. Through the embodied light, the performer’s
costumed body becomes a site of performance as well as a site for meaning-
making. Moreover, pregnancy is that kind of subjective experience that
can resonate broadly to the global audience on an emotional level beyond
language, social and cultural traditions, or standardized beliefs. It also thor-
oughly reorients the sense of space and materiality towards internal sensual
experience.13 Dimitris Papaioannou clearly expresses that this effect of inti-
macy was his intention, in explaining:
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Sofia Pantouvaki
This is exactly where the power of this scene lays: in the poetic, dream-like
expression that focuses on human experience beyond conventional expressive
styles for large-scale performance. And here, the wearable devices that make
the pregnant woman’s belly to glow are the tools inviting the audience to this
intimate interaction. They overcome distance and allow a spatial experience of
the senses (Merleau-Ponty 1962/2010).
Poetic representations and poiesis in responding to our engagement with
the world – in the ancient Greek etymology of the word, which means ‘making’
or ‘creating’ – embody ‘action and transformation, as well as ongoing narra-
tive experience’, as noted by Wilde (2009: 3). In Heidegger’s understanding of
poiesis as ‘a bringing forth’ that ‘brings hither out of concealment forth into
unconcealment’ (Heidegger 1977: 10–11), wearable technology here creates a
direct connection to the birth that is to come, through embodied transforma-
tion. In Heidegger’s terms (1962), the pregnant woman in this scene reaches
a moment of ecstasis in the performance narrative when the belly glows. For
a few seconds, the audience is ‘brought forth’ to experience the miracle of
human life, perhaps unexpectedly transferred from the large scale of the public
event to the intimate scale of the human body. In Merleau-Ponty’s defini-
tion, this happens through the synthesis of time and space in which the body
inhabits (Merleau-Ponty 1962/2010). ‘This poetics is read through our phys-
ical and emotional experiences of specific structures’, remarks Kozel (2007:
181). The poetic interaction involved here is made possible through narrative,
context, the costumed body and the technology this body embodies.
Closing
The Athens 2004 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony had a strong positive
international appeal, which supports Papaioannou’s claim that,
As shown through the analysis of this case, the intersection of costume and
new technologies has the potential to create new artistic concepts as well as
new expressive narratives. It must be emphasized that the specific example
performed in public in 2004 (hence the concept had been developed earlier
than that), when wearable technologies were still an emergent and not yet
refined medium for performance experimentation; yet the result retains its
expressive power. It also implies that a much more dynamic potential lies
within latest achievements in wearable technologies.
This article claims that, using new technological materials and media,
costume can become an interactive interface between the body of the performer
and the environment – the space, the other performers, the audience – as well
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Embodied interactions
References
Athens 2004 (2004a), Official Programme, Opening Ceremony of the Games of the
XXVIII Olympiad, 13 August, Athens: Athens 2004.
Athens 2004 (2004b), Opening Ceremony Media Guide, Athens: Athens 2004.
Athens 2004 (2004c), ‘Book of Life (DNA) & The Olive Tree’, Athens 2004
Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=nH-ryKk3sJo. Accessed 20 April 2014.
Birringer, J. and Danjoux, M. (2009), ‘Wearable performance’, Digital Creativity,
20: 1–2, pp. 95–113, http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/5681. Accessed
2 April 2014.
Broadhurst, S. and Machon, J. (eds) (2011), Performance and Technology:
Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity, Basingstoke/New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Coppola, F. F. (1986), Captain EO, US: Three DDD Productions, Eastman
Kodak Company, Lucasfilm, MKD Productions and Walt Disney
Imagineering (WDI).
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Embodied interactions
Suggested citation
Pantouvaki, S. (2014), ‘Embodied interactions: Towards an exploration of
the expressive and narrative potential of performance costume through
wearable technologies’, Scene 2: 1+2, pp. 179–196, doi: 10.1386/scene.2.1-
2.179_1
Contributor details
Sofia Pantouvaki, Ph.D., is Professor of Costume Design for Theatre and Film
at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University, Finland.
Trained in scenography at the University of the Arts London and La Scala,
Milan, her background includes over 70 designs for theatre, opera and dance
productions in Greece, Italy, UK, Cyprus and Finland. Co-author of History
of Dress: The Western World and Greece (2010) and co-editor of Presence and
Absence: The Performing Body (2014), Sofia has taught, lectured and published
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Sofia Pantouvaki
Sofia Pantouvaki has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that
was submitted to Intellect Ltd.
196