Wearable Space
Mark B. N. Hansen · Configurations · 2002
Let these citations stand for the two "poles" circumscribing current conceptions of wearable and ubiquitous computing. At one extreme, we encounter a fairly staid, yet nonetheless exciting, prospect for a hitherto unimaginable fluidity between human body and computer: an extension of the body that takes advantage of the rich panoply of bodily signals and internal regulatory processes. At the other extreme, we brush against a visionary, perhaps truly "alien," projection [End Page 321] of a complete fluidity between body and space: a mutual embedding of both in the primary "medium" of sensation. What I am calling "wearable space" results from the superposition of these two poles: space becomes wearable when affect becomes the operator of spacing or the production of space through bodily experience.