Color-changing fabrics, aromatherapy garments, mood-activated glowing frocks, feathered hats that detect radio frequencies, flashing jewelry that informs wearers of potential social encounters within proximity.
These may sound like fashion trends of the future, but for art history professor Susan Ryan, they’re happening now.
Ryan was recently awarded a $50,000 grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents’ Awards to Louisiana Artists and Scholars [ATLAS] for her proposal to write a manuscript about wearable technologies like these garments.
Ryan’s proposal, “Critical Dressing: Wearable Media as Discourse in the Digital Age,” will examine the history of wearable technologies. In doing so, Ryan will discuss the difference between design and art in wearable technology and gender associations related to the topic.
“Wearable technologies drive innovations in the expanding realm of mobile media, especially garments that augment our bodies’ capabilities, sense bodily functions for therapeutic purposes or connect us to online interfaces with social application,” Ryan said in a news release.
Ryan is using this academic year to write her manuscript and is nearing completion on her first of an anticipated four or five chapters.
Ryan recently returned from a research trip to London and Wales funded by the grant to view an archive containing research from previous studies of wearable technology. She said the trip aided her greatly in locating information she couldn’t have found elsewhere.
She has been researching wearable technology since Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home and all previous research. She said she noticed few were working with social fabrics and adopted it as her new focus.
Ann Whitmer, assistant dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, said ATLAS proposals are evaluated by importance, organization, feasibility and qualifications of the professor.
Whitmer said ATLAS funds are allocated to replace professors’ salaries so they can dedicate more time to research and completing their projects. She said some proposals also request funds for travel and other expenses.
Rod Parker, director of the School of Art, said ATLAS guaranteed Ryan six months of funding, and the school was able to match ATLAS’s sum to allow Ryan a full year to complete her manuscript.
Parker worked with Ryan on “Social Fabrics,” a fashion-show event that featured “wearable media” Ryan has researched. He said her focus at the time of the show was on North American projects, but with the ATLAS grant, she plans to take her research to the global level.
Parker said Ryan deserves the grant because “she has positioned herself as one of the world’s foremost experts in an area of history that’s really