Media Art and Wearable Technology: Re-Thinking Media and Art in Post-Mediatic Forms

Abstract

When Marshall McLuhan stated, 'Clothing, [is] an extension of the skin…' (Understanding Media, 129), the technologies were already out-running over imagination. Further, into the chapter, extensions of man, and media are extensions of our bodies and psy-ches. In the centuries before technology changed our perspective on media as a conceptual object. Thus, forcing us to accept the tech-nology to question; how to write traditions in post-mediatic turn in the Art.
This article discusses the roles and meanings of Friedrich Kittler’s “visual” media in the current mediatized society where in-ter-transmedial visual art mediums as creative methods. As well as examine how the performative motifs surface in contemporary arts and wearable technology in performance arts. A media installation & performance artist ‘Bill Shannon’ explores body-centric video installations through technology to incorporate the movement prac-tice of ‘extension of the skin’ as McLuhan stated. The two main as-pects of this discussion are; how media developed from the time of early cinema up to current new media as a form of Art; how techno-logy changed along with the post-mediatic turn in cultural forms. These two aspects will try to discuss through Bill Shannon, Yonghui Kim, Kieun Kim, and Ikeuchi Hiroto’s wearable media arts and look at the possible viewpoints of how digital media facilitate new approaches to wearable technology in the influence of media and hardware versus traditional concepts of Art.