Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Fatemeh Morsali Tohidi (Corresponding Author) Assistant Professor, Multimedia Department, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Kharazmi University of Tehran
Abstract
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, theoretician of postcolonial feminism, by borrowing the term "subaltern" from the tradition of Marxist studies, explained this critical concept in describing women as a subordinate and marginal other, within the framework of postcolonial theory. " Can the subaltern speak " is the title of the smart interactive masks project, designed by Behnaz Farhi, an architect and designer of smart clothes of Iranian origin, whose implementation was inspired by the masks of Bandari women in southern Iran. In this project, two smart masks that receive the danger from the power subject by the sensors and LEDs installed on it, begin to develop their individual language to communicate with each other and produce through rapid blinks. By the actoators, the artificial intelligence starts to produce Morse code. By creating a specific language for communication, the flashing masks project allows the subordinate subject to resist patriarchal hegemony and is designed with the aim of expanding the field of critical design on the body of modern and smart technologies. Smart clothes or wearable technologies, with the ability to receive and record the feelings and experiences of the user, interact with the environment and people and benefit from a wide range of technological capabilities, have created wide semantic and communication capacities in the field of expressing and projecting philosophical and critical concepts.
Using the descriptive-analytical method, the current research aims to study the cultural concept of subaltern and its interwoven relationships with power relations by referring to the wide capacities of smart interactive wearables in the field of expression and development of critical concepts. The findings of the research indicate that resistance, as a permanent correlate of the institution of power, in the intelligent guise of "Can the subaltern speak" through the development of individual language and the production of Morse code by artificial intelligence, leads to limiting the subject's dominance; As far as possible, this de-subjective and centripetal action can be interpreted in the form of the possibility of "positive forms of resistance" from the subaltern.
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