Sabine Seymour is a designer, author, entrepreneur, and researcher, known for her work in fashionable technology and design. She is the director of the Fashionable Technology Lab and Assistant Professor of Fashionable Technology at Parsons the New School for Design. Seymour is the founder of Moondial Inc., a consulting company specializing in the integration of technology and fabrics.
Seymour is an editorial review board member of the International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction and chaired the Rockefeller Foundation Grant–funded project Computational Fashion at Eyebeam Art+Technology Center, New York. Seymour has received numerous grants and awards, including the Michael Kalil Endowment for Smart Design Fellowship.
Seymour received a PhD and MSc in Social and Economic Sciences from the Vienna University of Economics and Columbia University in New York, and a MPS in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University.
Eyebeam Project (2012):
Computational Fashion
Computational Fashion was an Eyebeam initiative that brought together artists, fashion designers, scientists, and engineers to explore emerging ideas and develop work at the intersection of fashion and wearable technology. Launching in 2012 with support from the Rockefeller Foundation Cultural Innovation Fund, the program gives fashion designers, and tech entrepreneurs access to emerging practices and trends through public programs and learning engagements.
Programs ranged from intimate workshops for 15 people to panel discussions for 150, to exhibitions for 300. Presenters and collaborators have included leading design, science, and legal experts from Shapeways, Materialise, adidas, threeASFOUR, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New School, and NYU, to highlight a few participants.
Computational Fashion events included the annual, highly competitive Computational Fashion Master Class, a studio residency and R&D initiative between Eyebeam and Shapeways that creates advanced design processes for fashion houses.
An Introduction to Computational Fashion: Transforming design, textiles and the social experience around wearable technology
A public presentation and reception as Eyebeam launched its latest initiative, Computational Fashion in New York. Bringing together artists, scientists, technologists and the fashion industry, Computational Fashion explores cutting edge ideas at the convergence of fashion and creative technology. The inaugural event will feature presentations by Gabi Asfour, fashion designer and co-founder of threeASFOUR, Sabine Seymour, designer, writer, and professor of fashionable technology at Parsons, and Katherine Isbister, computer scientist and research director of the Game Innovation Lab at NYU-Poly.
Gabi Asfour will present the cutting edge work designed by threeASFOUR and their recent collaborations with technologists in digital fabrication. Dr. Sabine Seymour will discuss synergies between fashion and technology by presenting state-of-the-art artistic and technology examples such as smart textiles that have the potential to function as a second skin to re-create, modify or extend the body through technology. Dr. Katherine Isbister will present her research conducted at the Game Innovation Lab that explores ways to broaden the emotional and social palette that technology offers us by building and testing prototype systems using a wide range of the latest sensing and feedback technologies. Isbister will also discuss her current collaborative work with Eyebeam Fellow Kaho Abe, funded as part of the Computational Fashion initiative.
About the Presenters
Gabi Asfour is a designer and co-founder of the fashion label threeASFOUR. Their inventive and experimental work has been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, and Musee de la Mode et du Costume Galliera, and is in the permanent collection of the Costume Institute at Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2001, threeASFOUR won the Ecco Domani Fashion Grant given to innovative designers in the fashion industry.
Dr. Sabine Seymour focuses on the intertwining of aesthetics and function in fashion and technology. Her company Moondial consults on fashionable technology to companies and institutions worldwide. Moondial Lab is the nexus between silicon and style. She an Assistant Professor of Fashionable Technology at Parsons The New School for Design in New York. She has published extensively on the subject, including recent books, Fashionable Technology and Functional Aesthetics.
Dr. Katherine Isbister is jointly appointed between the NYU-Poly Computer Science Department and the NYU Game Center. Isbister is Research Director of the Game Innovation Lab at NYU-Poly. Her research in Human Computer Interaction focuses on enhancing the social and emotional range of everyday interaction with technology. Isbister is a recipient of MIT Technology Review’s Young Innovator award, and received a Humboldt Experienced Researcher award in 2011. Her research has been covered in Wired, Scientific American, and on NPR and BBC radio.
Computational Fashion is supported in part by the Rockefeller Foundation NYC Cultural Innovation Fund.
People: Gabi Asfour, Kaho Abe, Katherine Isbister, Sabine Seymour
Research: Open Culture
Tags: Art and Design, Fashion, hacking, wearable technology