Fictitious Devices: The Extra-Embodied Experience of Kate Hartman's Wearables

Kate Hartman’s “fictitious devices” or wearables exaggerate the experience of quotidian social communication. Ear Bender consists of a soft knitted cap attached to a large funnel extending from the wearer’s ear. When spoken into it amplifies the sound and visual effect of talking a person’s ear off. While donning the Glacier Hugger suit one can passionately embrace a glacier. Audience Jacket, designed with the Social Body Lab of OCAD University, where Hartman is Director, plays the sound of hundreds of people applauding when the wearer lifts their arms. While electronic textiles often perform in light of a biological absence—smart bras monitor heart health or electric socks generate heat—Hartman’s wearables amplify and estrange natural bodily behaviors, awakening us to the emotional experiences of ordinary human interaction. Interestingly, Hartman’s work emerges at a time when such experiences are censored by technologies (earbuds, video calling, email) designed to advance communication.

The contemporary philosopher L.A. Paul suggests that in lieu of a transformative experience, a process of self-deception must occur for one to change their values. Such an event she argues is intrinsically irrational. With these contentions, one could conclude that conspicuous masquerade serves as a critical antidote to the isolating and angst-producing entrapments of the current technosphere. This paper uses Paul’s work on (ir)rationality to situate new wearable art, such as Hartman’s, in a speculative context, where a sequestering of self in the extra-embodied experience represents a surreal desire for another future.