Wearable Tech and Smart Products Design Competition: Reshape19 Cognified Matter

Wearable Tech and Smart Products Design Competition: Reshape19 Cognified Matter

Launched on a yearly basis, the Reshape Competition focuses on tech in fashion and smartp roducts. The contest attracts designers worldwide willing to explore the impact of tech in design solutions on our daily life, habitats, and social behaviors.We are moving towards an era of augmentation. Wearables, smart devices, and e-textiles are new solutions for future hybrid generations of interconnected humans and devices.The higher level of interaction is producing new paradigms, raising novel questions, imposing different habits, shifting economies and politics. Through technology, we are on the verge of a change in the perception of our habitats, ecosystems, bodies, social behaviors and interactions.The Challenge of RESHAPE V focuses on future applications of Wearable Tech and Smart Products,inviting creative minds to predict new trends, elaborate novel solutions, and re-calibrate existing markets in the direction of more sustainable models. Our goal is to redefine contemporary devices towards a new generation of cognitive nodes, connecting us to our habitats and ecosystems.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Our Scientific Committee is composed by a team of top international experts representatives from Industry, Academic and Institution fields.
-Bradly Dunn Klerk Formerly positioned as CEO of Iris van Herpen, Couture Fashion label well known for her innovative experiments with materials, techniques and technologies. He is responsible for all the IvH Couture shows, exhibitions and international media.
-Anastasia Pistofidou Director of the Fab Textile research lab and the Fabricademy, a new textile and technology academy. Anastasia combines the analogue and the digital towards applied research focused on new materials, art and textiles.
-Valerie Bergeron Director of Materfad-materials centre of Barcelona, at the FAD- Fostering Arts and Design. Valérie also coordinates, for FAD, permanent and temporary exhibitions related to Materfad activities and lectures on architecture, museography and innovative materials for different professional and educational programs.

JURY MEMBERS
*The Reshape jury panel is composed of an international experts representatives from fashion industry,Product industry and Education fields. The Jury panel will evaluate the submitted projects fromRESHAPE19| cognified matter competition, selecting three winners and two honorable mentions for each category.(*the whole panel will be presented along the following month.)
-Behnaz Farahi Architecture, Fashion and Interaction Designer.Behnaz Farahi is interested in exploring the potential of interactive environments and their relationship to the human body through the implementation of emerging technologies in contemporary art/architecture practice.Her work is in the permanent collection of one of the most important science museums in the US, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Her work has been exhibited internationally at Ars Electronica, Linz and Context Art Miami, and has been featured in several magazines and online websites including WIRED, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, Frame Magazine, and many more. Farahi haswon several awards including Innovation By Design Linda Tischler Award,World Technology Award(WTN) and is the recipient of the BASA and Mad Workshop Grants and the Rock Hudson Fellowship.Farahi has worked with leading firms such as Adidas, Autodesk, Fuksas Studio, and 3D Systems /will-i-am. Currently she is an Annenberg Fellow and PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Media Arts and Practice at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She has a Bachelor’s and two Masters degrees in Architecture

-Julia Weems Fashion School Director at IED Barcelona Julia Weems began her career studying such disciplines as Art History, Costume, Fashion and Textile Design between New York and Barcelona. Soon afterwards, she started to work as a freelance stylist in New York, collaborating with such magazines as Glamour, Elemental, FHM, Paper Magazine,Podivm and Style.com as well as major international celebrities and numerous video-publicity productions. Julia has additionally worked as costume designer for experimental arts events, namely for the J Mandle Performance Company as well as in the production of fashion shows, events and parties. Upon moving to Barcelona, she has continued her career in such fields as theater costume design (for Teatre Lliure and Teatre Tantarantana), fashion show production (Jose Castro’s shows in Paris and Barcelona), fashion designer – as such, she has collaborated with Debora Francis for her capsule line of high-end jackets for celebrities, Jose Castro’s creative team and her own labels. Currently she is the Fashion School Director at IED Barcelona Escola Superior de Disseny.

-Alberto Lovisetto 3D project coordinator Moncler.Alberto worked for Dainese since 2008 and created the last technical motorbike and ski wear collections. Always been technology enthusiastic immediately tried to utilize innovative instruments in order to speed up his work results. Currently he is working for Moncler as 3DProject coordinator.

COMPETITION CATEGORIES
*Wearable technology category For the Wearable technology track, we challenge designers to come up with clothing solutions that establish a connection with the environment. We seek a wide variety of proposals, from innovative materials and wearable electronics to prosthetic applications, with a mediating function between our body and its needs. We are looking for wearable products, programmable materials or biotechnology applications that intervene on common health issues, such as respiratory problems, harmful body postures, disabilities, and stress, or tackle the pollution of natural elements – air, water. The submitted project needs to present a clear prototyping design methodology, to involve digital manufacturing technologies, and to highlight qualities of safety and recyclability, suggesting the potential of being reused or composted. Interdisciplinary processes, experimental approaches, and innovative design strategies become necessary for those striving to be the pioneers of this digital age.

*Smart Product Category Smart Product design is the category directed to all creatives and designers interested in product solutions promoting well-being and health care and in a wide range of applications – from sports to automotive and medical devices. Reshape challenges makers and designers to present a product able to function as the mediating factor between the forces shaping our environments, and monitoring, sensing, and interacting with the physical and digital world. Proposals must take into consideration the social impact of their production and consumption cycle. Interdisciplinary processes, experimental approaches, and innovative design production are required to become the pioneers of the digital age.

CRITERIA
● CONCEPT IDEA Significant attention will be given to those projects that reconsider the idea of design in an inventive and experimental way, establishing interconnections between users, environment and data.
● PROTOTYPE FABRICATION Reshape aims to merge both design and production, in the making of a complete creative process. Each design approach must encompass a clear fabrication strategy, materializing design solutions with tools that are available in a Fab Lab or Makerspace
● DISSEMINATION STRATEGY A dissemination plan needs to be elaborated. In order to visualize your idea in a potential market, is crucial to set a dissemination strategy, proposing convincing scenarios of implementation for each proposal