Behaviour, emotions and wearable technology

Abstract

The way we dress has many different meanings and purposes. In the past years clothing has taken a step into the world of technology, a concept that has been termed wearable technology. This thesis aims to examine the connection between dress, technology and wearer. Even though wearable technology is today mostly concentrated on the health monitoring, the focus in this thesis will be on wearables in innovative fashion design and what that means for the wearer. The thesis will depart in an introduction to wearable technology, with a brief historical description and what focus wearable technology has had up to today. Further a number of fashion theories on how we determine the material reasons of why we dress will be presented and three concepts: protection, modesty and camouflage will be discussed as possible explanations. The thesis will then study the concept of meaning with the aim to determine how we have meaningful relationships, both with people around us but also with our clothing. The chapter will look at how behaviour can be altered, for example by colours, and by the end of the chapter emotional expression will be examined as a crucial part of the human behaviour. In the last chapter three projects carried out by designers will be presented followed by a discussion about how they investigate the relationship between the human, clothing and wearable technology. How these designers are studying the human emotions and behaviour and merging this with wearables will also be analysed. The analysis holds a theory supported argument about the difficulty to generalize the material reasons for clothing. Therefore clothing might be more about the emotional meaning of the clothing and how it works as communication between the wearer and viewer, and that it is possible for wearable technology to change that communication and meaning.