This presentation was part of the symposium Unhanded. In this panel we ask about the variety of new relationships with materials that emerging with the increasing ubiquitousness of digital technologies. With the increased complexity of tools we wonder how do we learn about materials? How do we get to know them? How do we share this knowledge? We can now know the molecular structure of wood or metal without touching it. Is this a more intimate relationship than working directly with our hands? Does it matter? If the objects coming out of digital and mechanical processes are more removed from our handywork, how might they carry the mark of the machine? Should we be able to read the machine in the material?
The University of Concordia invites you to donate to a fund to honour Valerie’s legacy and memory.
To donate, please visit the following link: https://engage.concordia.ca/donate
Valérie Lamontagne was an artist-designer and PhD scholar who specialized in “Performative Wearables: Bodies, Fashion, Technologies and Laboratory Cultures.” She conducted her research at Concordia University, where she also taught in the Department of Design & Computation Arts. Lamontagne curated and collaborated on numerous design and media arts exhibitions and events, notably “The Future of Fashion is Now” at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands (2014); “TechnoSensual” at MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, Austria (2012); “Clothing Without Cloth” at V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, Netherlands (2011); “Electromode” at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, Canada (2010); “Sartorial Flux” at A+D Gallery, Columbia College in Chicago, USA (2006); “Ellipse” at Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Canada (2002); and “Location / Dislocation” at the New Museum in New York, USA (2001). Her artworks and designs were featured internationally across festivals, galleries, museums, and in various magazines and publications. She was the owner and designer of 3lectromode, a wearable electronics atelier known for its avant-garde crafting and consulting in fashionable technologies. Additionally, she founded Agence Simultané, a post-digital incubator and production company.
From 2001 to 2017, Valérie Lamontagne was an adjunct professor at Concordia University, where she earned a PhD with a dissertation entitled “Performative Wearables: Bodies, Fashion and Technology.” In February 2018, the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences appointed her a professor of Fashion Research and Technology at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute. Her career was cut short by her untimely death in 2019.
Wearables as a kind of epistemic culture doesn't have a hierarchy right now.
Developed in our Digital Economies Lab, An Artist’s Almanac is Suzanne Kite’s dive into artist solidarity through exchange and sharing. Kite discussed how she began from the DEL’s central focus on fostering artistic prosperity, and expanded toward questions about whether existing resources are going where they are needed most. Through her work on the project she builds a network of collaborators and fosters dreaming and imagining workshops as a path toward a better future.
Join us as Macy Siu gives us the lowdown on another development from the Digital Economies Lab – the Offer/Need Machine. In an era where the gig economy has monetized every informal network from ride sharing to pet sitting, the Offer/Need Machine proposes a network of decentralized reciprocity. Pay close attention to when Siu explains the need for an anti-capitalist model and more-than-human design.