Saturday, June 10th, 2000

The "Origins of Cyberfashion" show was part of the grand finale gala closing event of the recent four day TED conference. It was a meeting of minds, held this year, June 7-10, 2000, in Toronto, Canada. Why Toronto? It has been argued by many that Toronto is the world's most cosmopolitan city,and so it is not surprising that the cultural environment of Toronto was conducive to growing the seeds of this movement more than 15 years ago.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and previous TED conferences have attracted such notables as Bill Gates, Michael Ovitz, and Billy Graham. This is the ultimate dinner party, where leaders and innovators of different disciplines converge to gain inspiration from outside their fields. It hasbeen called a religious experience for creative people. Jay Levine, director of what is known as perhaps the world's leading fashion production, Fashion Television, asked the University of Toronto to put on its show, and to re-create the energy and passion of the wearables fashion shows that started in Toronto in the summer of 1985 (Praxis Hardwear, Zia International, etc).

Prior to the fashion show, Jay Levine also hired some professional models to do a shoot of the wearable computers of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The year 2000 wearable computers were kept secret until the gala event when they were revealed for the first time to the world. The show ended at the year 2000, with no attempt to predict the future models of wearcomps.

Many reporters and photographers from major international fashion publications were present to document the event, including a film crew with an Arriflex motion picture camera, shooting it on real celluloid motion picture film.

Rather than having models or actors wearing the systems, approximately 14 students, currently working fulltime with University of Toronto Professor Steve Mann, wore and operated the systems in the show. Fully functional units were operated, while being worn on the runway, by the students. Live video was transmitted and displayed to the audiencce on large televisions throughout the main hall as well as the overflow rooms.

The gala fashion show featured Mann's "Wearable Computer" invention and chronicled the origins of the worldwide cyberfashion movement, from the first visual multimedia wearable computer in the 1970s, to the sciborg fashions which took root in Toronto in the summer of 1985, to the present day worldwide impact of this cyberfashion movement now followed by some of the leading designers such as Alain Mikli.

The show also featured some culturally significant pieces, such as the Maybe Camera and the Firing Squad. Judging by the mean squared applause amplitude averaged over a short time window, the crowd's favorite piece appeared to be the TieDome Augmented Reality Computer, which is a wearable augmented reality computer system designed to match the decor of just about any gambling casino or large department store. This dome certainly does not look out of place in such an environment, and is typically a favorite among security personnel and upper level management bureaucrats. It's the perfect accessory for wearing into places where photography is strictly prohibited, yet video surveillance is used extensively by management for behavioural monitoring. They don't know what's in your tie clip, and so management now has to be on its best behaviour at all times.

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