Going to be at TEI'15 this year?  Check out Katherine Isbister and Kaho Abe at the Costumes as Game Controllers Workshop.  The workshop will provide participants with a hardware kit for quickly protoyping wearable game controllers. Topics include:

• Embodied interaction and embodied game interfaces, characters and avatars.
• Basics of method acting and “outside->in” theatrical techniques.
• Cultural perspectives on clothing, fashion, and wearability.
• The importance of shaping experience, identity, and sociality in addition to individual–focused function when designing wearable interfaces.

Fashion aficionados similarly use the clothing they select to inhabit an identity and to project that identity in social contexts and interactions with others. What takes place in a bounded ‘magic circle’ of gameplay with costuming, we believe also has relevance outside this sphere and in the realm of everyday life. We can see the beginnings of the modulation of wearables into fashion with experiments like Google’s collaboration with Diane von Furstenberg putting Glass on runway models. This studio will allow participants to reflect upon the transformation of wearables into fashion objects in their own right, toward anticipating and designing these aspects of such devices.

The “Costumes and Wearables as Game Controllers” studio aims to explore how researchers within the tangible and embodied interaction community can expand the expressive possibilities inherent in wearables and embodied interfaces by applying inspiration from costuming and fashion design

Kaho Abe and Katherine Isbister are also demoing their game-in-progressfeaturing interactive costumes. We believe the game will be an interesting experience for TEI attendees, and could spark discussion about the relationship between costuming, wearable technology, and games.

For more information about the workshop and it's esteemed organizers, click here.