A Wearable Studio Practice

As much as the act of making is a form of creative expression, it is also a means of experiencing the world.

The world, experienced through the hands of a maker is a malleable place. Making things and making things happen, are means of exploring what we don’t know. Our studios provide space for our ideas to unfold. Conveniently organized tools at hand, everything is in it’s right place. The studio provides infrastructure, power, shelter. Working in our studios, the days slip by. But the walls of our studio also confine our practice to a particular place. What can we experience when we pack up our tools and take our practice outdoors?

A Wearable Studio Practice is a collection of wearable and portable items that make it easier to become nomadic in your practice of making and manipulating the world. But foremost it is a mindset, of making as a means of experiencing the world.

In my previous work I’ve taken the premise that building technology from different materials in unusual ways will lead us to build a greater diversity of technology. Because different people drawn to different things will produce different outcomes. With a wearable studio practice, the underlying assumption is that taking the tools of our trade with us to work in new places will expose our practices and ourselves to new experiences.

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The experiences we will have traveling practicing our trade will challenge us in unexpected ways. We will have conversations with people who know nothing of what we do. Our tools can be our translators. They are often capable of making what we are unable to explain in words. We will infiltrate the work-environments of other disciplines, mixing up our tools, leaving some behind and packing new ones to carry. We will have tools in common with foreign cultures, because our intentions were the same. We will pay attention to materials we never considered before. Our practice out of context might become meaningless. But our tools are not only good at making things, but we also use them for comfort when we feel lost.

All this traveling and transporting of tools for the sake of arriving at a greater diversity within the field of technology.

Does carrying your tools with you wherever you go sound appealing to you? The designs in the collections are all open source with intentions to document them in enough detail that you can replicate them, tailor them to your own practice and improve up on them. If you are inspired by any of the work here or are already working on something similar, I would love to see what you’re making. Please get in contact by sending an email to hannah@plusea.at

The Wearable Studio Playlist

The Wearable Studio Collections

From functional to fictional, the Wearable Studio Collections contain ongoing series of solutions and proposals for the nomadic maker. Some collections, such as PIFpack and Tool Suits contain functional items intended to provide a mobile work environment comparable to that normally contained in a studio. Other collections like Working Late and Body Modifications reflect upon our relationships with tools. Through visual means the items in these collections tell stories of what might be.

Functional

Packing up to leave does not need to be so hard. Packing up is one of the most daunting tasks I associate with traveling somewhere for a project. The fear of forgetting an essential item, disrupting an organized workspace to pack things into bags and boxes for transport. Transporting everything from one place to the next. Convenience, comfort, portability, wearability are important adjectives describing items in the Wearable Studio Collections, because if we want to be mobile in our practice we need this simple step to be made as easy as possible.

Fictional

Tools extend the capability of our body to manipulate the world. We don’t leave our hands behind when we go out with friends or hike to the top of a mountain. We can fidget with napkins and bottle labels, pick leaves and pull appart flowers wherever we are. What if we had our scissors, our pliers, our soldering iron and tweezers built in to our everyday clothing. What will fidgeting with tools lead to? Suits, costumes, body extensions. Humorous, serous. Tools in waiting. Tools at hand. Tools on body. Tools are Bodies.

Customizeable Identity

A Wearable Studio Practice is symbolized by a 3×3 hole square grid. You can look through the holes, beyond the “wall” of fabric. The grid structure represents organization, one of the most basic solutions A Wearable Studio Practice provides.
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Each collection is represented by a shape cut from a different piece of material which is then sewn to the item in the collection using thick thread. The customization of the embroidery implies that even a stringent gird of holes provides a basis for individualization.
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Individualized embroidery is used to connect the collection shape to the collection item. For example I’ve embroidered “Hh” on my items for my name Hannah.

This Wearable Studio Practice identity was developed together with Nina Uhr. It is based on the Pegboard Fabric concept (a fabric version of the traditional hardwood pegboards for tool-organization) which requires you to punch holes in a material and use a thick thread to sew items together.