ABSTRACT
Using mobile devices within digital art and performance has enabled the medium to remain an ever-evolving opportunity for artistic expression in live art, dance, immersive theater, and music, in tandem with wearable technologies. Mobile performance has increasingly become key in the technology of intermedial performance, though it is more specific to portable devices and does not include the wide range of tools and technologies that can be employed within contemporary performance work. These changes have also enabled a morphing landscape upon which to build new discourses such as current contentions around data usage and privacy within the broader socio-cultural realm.
This chapter will cover key issues and developments in creating wearables that collect or use data to measure or provide health or other information to the user, and also the privacy and ethical issues this type of creative practice reveals. It will provide examples of performance and design projects that have emerged over the years that investigate data and the body using wearable technologies and electronic (e-)textiles. Further critical reflection upon two recent personal projects will explore revealing body data as identity for performance, and the ethical implications for the wider wearables design and development life-cycle in design world. It explores the intentions and tensions of art and design in performance using wearables.
