Wearable Virus Shields: From Futuristic Dystopias to Actual Dread

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Title	Wearable Virus Shields
Subtitle	From Futuristic Dystopias to Actual Dread
Contributor	Francesco Spampinato(author)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.53288/0448.1.05
Landing page	https://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-pandemic-visual-regime-visuality-and-performativity-in-the-covid-19-crisis/
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Copyright	Francesco Spampinato
Publisher	punctum books
Published on	2023-11-09
Long abstract	Several dystopian design projects aimed at protecting and/or isolating users have been developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, including masks, visors, body bubbles, and other types of shields that allow avoiding actual contact with the surrounding space and with other people who could be possible carriers of the virus. The essay explores the uncanny analogies between speculative design ideas based on futuristic scenarios on one side, and practical design solutions, both self-made and mass-marketed, developed to cope with actual risks of contamination. After a brief history of wearable protections against “contagions”—with references to the evolution of cloth face masks in medicine, the paraphernalia related with the Cold War, and 1960s radical design projects—an overview of inventive masks and face shields of the COVID era will be outlined. Ranging from humoristic to fashionable to functional, these wearable inventions to prevent airborne respiration droplets from touching the user’s face have become a symbol of our time. The essay will take into consideration issues related to dread, dystopia, and the impact of media technologies on our imagination of a future in which we’ll live alienated, interacting with each other from behind screens.
Page range	pp. 91–116
Print length	26 pages
Language	English (Original)
Keywords	COVID-19 dystopia speculative design face shields wearable technologies future

Contributors

Francesco Spampinato

(author)

associate professor in the Department of the Arts at Università di Bologna

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8098-2838

Francesco Spampinato is an associate professor in the Department of the Arts at the University of Bologna. His research in the fields of contemporary art history and visual studies is focused on the relationships between contemporary art, media, and technology, with particular attention to topics such as postmodernism, collective practices, media experimentations, and the effect of personal computers and the internet on visual culture. His latest publications include Art vs. TV: A Brief History of Contemporary Artists’ Responses to Television (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022); the edited monographs GMM—Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici: Computer Comics 1984–1987 (NERO, 2021), and Ran Slavin: Shapeshifter (Mousse Publishing, 2022); and monographic essays for either academic journals or exhibition catalogues on Public Movement (PAJ, 2018), Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin (Fondazione Prada, 2019), USCO (Visual Culture Studies, 2020), Studio Alchimia (Palinsesti, 2021), Susan Kare (Imago, 2022), and Kraftwerk (NeoClassica, 2023).