A sustained process connected storytelling, making and rehearsal.
Experiential workshop and performance · 2014
Wearable Narratives
A four-session experiential workshop in which young participants transformed personal stories into handmade wearable-electronic performances.
Read the project ↓2014Wearable NarrativesArchive documentation under review
Project typePerformance · Research · Tool / prototype · Fashiontech
ThemesEmbodied & haptic interaction · Wearables & e-textiles · Participation & co-design
FormWorkshop and performance
Year2014
ParticipantsYoung people aged 12–17
ContextHYBRIDS · Onassis Stegi / Ars Electronica
01 · Proposition
A personal story can become a second skin
Wearable Narratives combined documentary theatre, improvisation and electronic textiles to help participants give material and performative form to everyday experiences.
Across four three-hour sessions, participants developed stories through making, conversation and movement. Smart clothing became a medium for organising memory, identity and imagined possibilities around the body.
The workshop culminated in an interactive performance. The outcome was not a uniform technical object but a collection of situated narratives shaped by each participant’s choices and presence.
02 · Experience
Remember, make, perform
- 01
Narrate
Participants begin with personal experiences and everyday observations.
- 02
Materialise
Stories are developed into handmade wearable-electronic propositions.
- 03
Perform
Improvisation and documentary theatre bring the individual works into a shared event.
03 · Reflection
Technology can carry situated voices
The workshop treated wearable electronics as a means of authorship rather than a predetermined technical lesson.
Wearable Narratives connected making with self-representation and collective performance. By moving between story, textile, electronics and gesture, participants could decide what their wearable disclosed, transformed or held close.
Young participants authored the content and form of the wearables.
Individual narratives became a shared interactive event.
Credits & archive
Project record
- Workshop design and facilitation
- Ricardo O’Nascimento, Afroditi Psarra and Evi Souli
- Programme
- HYBRIDS at Onassis Stegi with Ars Electronica
References
Wearable Narratives — Anamorfica ↗
