Second Skin

The Sensate wearable female condom, Tonita Abeyta, 2001

Skin: Surface, Substance + Design was originally published to accompany the 2002 exhibition of the same name at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. The recent reissue includes a new introduction, ‘2nd Skin,’ by the show’s curator, Ellen Lupton. This updated prologue takes into account new work that’s in the traveling redux of Skin, called Second Skin and being produced in conjunction with Vitra Design Museum. I wasn’t able to go to the initial exhibit, so can’t vouch for the experience, but if the catalog is any indication of the show, then I am probably justified in being peeved at missing it. However, in the manner of other exhibition publications with Lupton at the helm, Skin is worthy of consideration as its own self-sustaining entity, not quite replacing the exhibition, but at least offering something substantial in its stead.

Lupton’s new intro covers some old ground from the 2002 show. A main theme, pushed by new inclusions to the travelling exhibition, is the merging of artificial and biological skin in new design. Lupton asserts that ‘As products become more like living things, the body is increasingly approached as a consumer product.’ Collagen, botox and chemical peels, not to mention myriad possibilities for surgical lifts and enhancements, render the modern skin a pliable, dynamic product for and of cultural consumption. Concurrently, industrial products increasingly mimic the properties of skin, engendering new materials that fold, glow, give, and, as with the Elextex Soft Keyboard, from IDEO (2001), actively respond to the pressure of human touch. The farthest extrapolation of this concept is Apligraf, a living skin substitute grown in a petri dish from collagen and harvested skin cells.

As the gap between designed and biological skin closes, designers are also finding more ways to bring industrial products closer to the human body. Along these lines, each section of the exhibition, divided by theme and a short introductory text, begins with a photograph from Elinor Carucci that closely examines the imprint (sometimes literal, like in the shallow, fleshy indent of ‘Zipper Mark’) of industrial products on human skin.

One of my favorite pieces in the book—who knows if I would have had the same response in person; these are the musings of a computer-bound, West coast book reviewer, I suppose—is representative of this concept of industrial-on-biological skin action. The Sensate latex garment from Tonita Abeyta is a female condom/underwear hybrid that, according to Abeyta, ‘aims to bridge the gap between the medical devices we have to protect ourselves and the erotic paraphernalia we use to express and enjoy ourselves.’ As a description, I can only offer a cross between a mutant surgical glove and something from the Fifth Element. There is no closer expression of second skin than the condom, especially one that mimics our other daily covering—clothing—to become an expression of both nature (function) and culture (fashion—once a latex mold of the wearer is made, it can be cut into various garment styles). Just as the skin of new technology on, say, your ipod, provides a necessary barrier between what lies unintelligibly below the surface and the unavoidable human destruction that is implied with daily use, so does the Sensate wearable condom provide protection of delicate, often mysterious interiors through the creation of an industrial ‘second skin’. The boundaries have been blurred—there is no longer a clear division between nature and culture, and there is no longer a clear division between latex condoms and sex. The evolution of disease has rendered this artificial product a necessary element of a previously ‘natural’ process; we need this second skin to survive.