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The shift from 3D body scanned data to the physical world
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Reilly, Lyle
This paper highlights the technological relationship and opportunities to combine 3D body scan and 3D print technologies for consideration within the fashion sector. Three dimensional (3D) human body scanning technology has been available for more than 20 years; fashion along with a number of other industries such as entertainment, security and medical have successfully extracted computational scanned data to obtain specific body measurement to gain a picture of body shape, proportion and posture. This information can provide valuable insight when dealing with the complexity of the human form, particularly in the context of lifestyle, age, ethnicity and location. Predominately this empirical data has been gathered to develop size/measurement averages for large population studies (11,000 participants were scanned, providing 130 body separate body measurements, in recent commissions in both SizeUK and SizeUSA). In a fashion context, the information provided by these large studies has tended to reflect the mass apparel market, in particular sizing measurements for targeted groups, while customization of 3D body scan data for individuals within the fashion and textile industries has been limited. To date the most prominent examples have come from the niche market arena of men’s suiting and specialized sportswear to aid fit, comfort and performance. Over a similar period of time, 3D printing technology has also grown to the point that commercially available equipment has helped to shift a design approach for modelling and rapid prototyping applications. This technological transformation is having a profound effect on existing industries, for instance engineering, while also providing a fresh platform for emerging designers from many sectors to communicate design ideas as a physical reality. For example, bespoke fashion accessories developed by UK designer Catherine Wales in her 2013 work “Project DNA” illustrates that the fashion and textiles industries can also take part in this industrial transformation. Using a technology focused design thinking framework, the research explores the opportunity for combining both these technologies; in other words utilizing individual 3D body scan data in the form of a point cloud to produce physical 3D modelling for customization purposes. At this stage there is little documentation of the reflective practice to empower designers with the techniques to connect these technologies, or indeed the exploration of creative possibilities and human centred outcomes. This paper documents early stage development of the conversion process from a Symcad 3D body scanner to outputs obtained from a Formiga P100 3D laser sintering system housed within the Design & Creative Technologies Faculty at AUT University, New Zealand. The physical prototype outputs are based on actual body scan data to produce a scaled mannequin. Key research findings and insight clusters are evaluated within a summary framework which highlights potential applications and uses for the fashion sector to engage with such technology to personalize and enrich human engagement.
Wear, repair and remake: the evolution of fashion practice by design
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Cramer, Jo
Through my postgraduate, fashion practice-based research project, The Living Wardrobe, I have become increasingly interested in garment design that specifically facilitates future alteration and modification. There is potential for such a simple design approach to encourage habits of reduced consumption when garments are kept in use by adapting to wearers’ changing needs. Once a common provision in garments, the capacity for alteration is largely missing from contemporary women’s wear. The economies of mass production reduce seam allowances to the minimum required for assembly, while complex industrial construction methods deter intervention. At the same time, the practical skills of repair and alteration are rarely learnt anymore. So passive has fashion consumption become and so disposable are the products that a dropped hem, ripped seam or missing button usually consigns a garment to the (charity) bin and justifies another trip to the boutiques. In an attempt to disrupt this cycle, my research looks at design strategies with the potential to re-engage the wearer in habits of wear, repair and remake. Designing garments with the adaptability required for prolonged, active use enables garments to better keep up with the times, changing style (not merely fit) over time. This approach to product longevity considers the use of the garment across multiple lifetimes, acknowledging that a garment may have several sequential owners. Through a discussion of recently developed garment prototypes, this paper will outline the challenges I have encountered in designing garments to actively engage consumers in this cycle of wear, repair and remake. These challenges range from the practical, technical and the aesthetic to considerations of participatory design strategies, consumer education, design authorship, and alternative models of fashion production and consumption. This discussion further considers the impact of this research on my fashion practice. The Living Wardrobe aims to be a fashion practice that accepts responsibility for the design agency of the garments it creates. Remaking my practice to this end has fundamentally shifted how I approach design development, fashion production and communication, suggesting a new model of fashion design practice for sustainability.
Transformational strategies: the Margiela Rabbit and the Gecko Girl
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Bagnall, Catherine; Collier, Katie
Elizabeth Costello, the elderly fiction writer in J.M Coetzee’s novel of the same name, discusses the possibility of how a human being can feel what it is like to be a bat. She believes that to feel thus, one does not need to experience bat life through the sense modalities of being a bat but rather “to be a living bat is to be full of being: being fully a bat is like being fully human, which is also to be full of being” (Coetzee, 2004, p. 69). Elizabeth Costello isn’t interested in clothing but she does believe that to feel what it is like to be a bat one needs the sensations of fullness and embodiedness; the sensation of being a body with limbs that have an extension in space, of being alive to the world. Wearing a dress with more than two sleeves gives me the sense of having more than two arms and in a dress with a tail I have a tail. The feeling of being in certain clothes offers me the potential to “become” something else and to feel expansive. This paper/performance presents findings from the work of two artists and designers who are both using the distinctively cultural form of clothing to explore the human/non-human animal divide. Both artists are putting into practice Deleuzian theories of “becoming other” as a transformational strategy to shift our relationship to our environment and our fellow non- human creatures using clothing, performance, photography and video to do this. The questions we both ask are: in this moment of complexity and uncertainty that the world is currently in, what is the role of imagination in inventing new possible worlds? How can the transformative nature of clothing offer new modes of experience that are possibly more sensual and slower than what we usually give value to and can clothing help to shift our relationship with the environment and other living creatures? Kate Soper argues that if we want to maintain a sustainable world that both humans and non-humans can happily and healthily continue to live in, we need alternative outlets for transcendence” that are not provided by Western industrialist consumerist culture which removes us from a natural simplicity or immanence, rather than returns us to it. (Soper, 1999) Considering these ideas we are interested in attempting to refigure a world where we are the ‘animal’. Two women, possibly wearing tails, will present this paper as a scripted performance.
Repeatless: transforming surface pattern with generative design
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Russell, Alex
Much of the initial use of digital technology within the printed textile industry has focused on the particular advantages that it has over previous fabric printing methods. Examples include simplifying workflow, producing relatively cheap short runs, or allowing designers to work with photographic imagery and unlimited colour palettes. This paper firstly identifies that digital fabric printing has a fundamentally different possibility in relation to its forerunners. Formerly, printing was essentially the ability to reproduce the same image (or text) over and over again. Digital printing, however, does not have to work from static information; it can print a design that changes as it is being printed. Secondly, the research demonstrates that digital technology can provide the content with which to do this, creating a design that not only changes as it is being printed, but that never repeats. This is achieved by a generative software application. The resulting code is based on cellular automata, a method of mathematical modelling that allows the elements within a system to evolve in relation to each other. In this case, the elements are the individual motifs or other visual components and the system is the overall design. The rules that govern how the motifs arrange themselves are based on methods used by printed textile designers to ensure the eye can roam freely over a design, balancing the arrangement and scale of the motifs, for example, or the negative space between them. The degree of complexity possible with cellular automata allows the qualitative design process to be modelled with a richness that maps the skills of creating pattern into code. The output is a non-repeating design of infinite length that can be saved section by section to be streamed to a digital printer, exploiting the technology in an entirely novel fashion. Seen individually, digital design and digital printing technology present a large number of new possibilities for the printed textile industry. This paper shows a way that interdisciplinary, practice-led research can integrate them and offer a method to shift the paradigms of what pattern is and the way in which it can be reproduced.
Shifting ideas of time and place in fashion
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Palomo-Lovinski, Noël; Faerm, Steven
This paper examines how shifting contemporary conceptions of time and place affect the current practices of the fashion industry. The Internet as a reporting tool, coupled with remarkably accelerated production cycles, has rendered fashion both contemporaneous yet timeless, thus making the traditional system of trends or selling cycles superfluous. As fashion companies expand within a global market, clothing has become both seasonless and placeless, as locality is overwhelmed by mass fashion. Demands prompted by these new conceptions of time and place are placing unprecedented responsibilities on designers who must increasingly develop excessive quantities of product suited to multiple climates and target highly differentiated aesthetic preferences and localized communities. Beyond the homogeneity of mass global fashion, the Internet has also helped to define communities beyond environmental proximity, thus rendering place as more of a concept then a literal idea. The fashion industry and academia must adapt to new best practices since the present system of doing business is counterproductive to establishing a viable and sustainable future. These changing perceptions of temporality and regional relationships create new opportunities for industry and education. How can designers create clothing that successfully addresses both localized and specialized demographics and succeeds in the increasingly timeless and placeless market? How will the designer's role evolve as a result of this expanding market? There are a few examples, both professional and theoretical, within the present fashion industry that can serve as burgeoning models for this new concept of practice. Educators and researchers such as Becky Earley, Holly McQuillan, Timo Rissanen, and Kate Fletcher have suggested a variety of “designer-as-maker” pathways in theoretical practice that seek to create tangible results. Design practitioners such as Natalie Chanin and Azzedine Alia have created business models that subvert the traditional industry systems. Additionally, small-batch manufacturing, made possible through technology such as 3D printing, digital textile printing, and knitting machines, suggests that fashion need not be confined to one place and limited by predetermined concepts of time. Seen through the framework of social geography and social theory perspectives, this paper examines the possible implications of time and place on design and future industry practices. These concepts will be examined through a two-pronged approach by considering both advocacy within the fashion industry, and how to best educate students so they may employ these best practices as future design leaders. This paper seeks to add to the conversation of professional practitioners with insights to navigate the evolving industry with alternative design and business structures. The paper also aims to provide design educators with an increased facility and awareness into future industry practices so they may successfully evolve their programmes and curricula.
Flirting with uncertainty: mutability, metamorphosis, and fashionability in the Greco-Roman imagination
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) McFerrin, Neville
For many ancient Greek and Roman men, fashion was fear: fear of the unknown, fear of the other, but most importantly, fear of the uncontrollable. The distinctly female ability to adopt and maintain multiple identities- shifting from daughter to wife to mother- was essential to the success of the creation of stable familial units, ensuring that wives could effectively transfer their loyalties from their natal households to that of their husbands. Despite the fact that Greek and Roman societal structures obligated women to take on multiple guises, their ability to do so fostered deep anxieties in their male counterparts. These anxieties centred on the limits of female mutability. For if change continued unchecked, women who might once have made respectable brides could become literal shapeshifters, monsters such as Medusa and Scylla, existing on the borders of society, out of the boundaries of male control. While living women could not shift from woman to beast in the manner of their mythic counterparts, they had the ability to exert their agency through mimetic acts, deliberately altering their physical appearance using cosmetics, dress accessories, and clothing. Such trappings of femininity loom large in both Greek and Latin textual sources and in visual representations of female dress. This article will explore the range of ways in which Greek and Roman audiences articulated connections between fashionable dress and both physical and mental alteration. By analysing sumptuary legislation and moral discourse on female dress, it will argue that the fear of semiotic confusion central to myths of female monsters was articulated in the real world through a distrust of fashionable women. But while textual sources give insight into the male viewpoint, to grapple with potential female conceptualizations of selfhood and its connection to selfpresentation, we must turn to the visual. Through a close visual analysis of the wall paintings of Room 5 in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, this article will conclude that while Greek and Roman men might have believed that fashion made women into monsters, in the hands of women, fashion was an instrument of transcendence. In the complex visual sphere of Room 5, the reduplication of depicted dress and adornment allowed women to exert the positive aspects of mutability, picturing a metamorphosis from woman to goddess, rather than from woman into beast.
Tactility and experience as transformational strategy
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Riisberg, Vibeke; Louise Bang, Anne; Locher, Laura; Breuil Moat, Alina
The Awareness Project investigates the following question: Can dialogue tools that challenge tactile competencies support the development of fashion and textile design in a sustainable direction? In this article, we pay special attention to user engagement and design education and discuss experiences of tactile sensibility as a means to create increased awareness about the material quality of textiles and garments. The aim of our research is to develop new dialogue tools to be used in the teaching of fashion and textile design students in order to stimulate new ways of thinking and engaging with users. By employing participatory methods in the field of fashion and textiles, we seek to develop an alternative transformational strategy that may further the design of products and services for a more sustainable future. In the initial theoretical section, we define tactile sensibility, which is at the core of our research question. Next, we take a closer look at what constitutes an experience and how scholars in the field of fashion and textiles connect this to sustainability issues. Subsequently, we describe the methodical basis of the dialogue tool and our empirical material. We base our discussion on two experiments conducted as part of the Awareness Project. The outcome of the study shows new ways of establishing dialogue between users and designers, as well as furthering reflection and verbalization of areas within the perception of textile and fashion products that are often considered “tacit knowledge” and a “tacit experience”. Finally, we conclude that if designers wish to promote change related to sustainability, it is likely that an embodied participatory dialogue that builds on the combination of user experience and tactile sensibility can be further developed into didactic tools to support a “new design paradigm” and eventually contribute to changes in the fast fashion system.
Eye tracking to establish a hierarchy of attention with an online fashion video
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Payne, Ryan
Engaging customers online is fast becoming a focus for entrepreneurs, researchers and marketers as it offers a platform with a lower barrier of entry and is heavily utilized among the tech savvy millennial generation (aged 18-24) through social applications currently such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Often, using it as an entertainment source to replace television shows, online videos for today’s millennial generation have become the new and socially acceptable way to interact with peers as well as with various brands. This research explores how fashion videos have risen in prominence and how they are perceived by the millennial generation. It explores attitude formation and online image processing to generate a hierarchical list of traits which participants focused upon when viewing a fashion video. The result is an established order to engage, direct and hold the attention of audiences for the longest time possible; eyes of the people in videos, lips, motion, size, images, colour, text style and, lastly, position. Using optometric or eye gaze tracking technology to capture where participants directed their focus, a comparison of what participants believed they valued to what they actually focused upon was demonstrated, with 30 semi-structured interviews and pre/post questionnaires to measure perceptions of the portrayed brand. This article articulates how the hierarchy generated is based upon a social referencing scheme for the viewer, followed by an attribute information search, to the situation and branded objects portrayed. Additionally this study, unsurprisingly, found that participants did not fully remember the full videos that they were exposed to, nor the content upon which they had directly focused. However, it is important to note that participants could recall considerably more amounts of information when their eye pupils dilated, presenting an opportunity for additional research.
Fashion beyond representation
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Shand, Peter
The promise of transformation is fashion’s most significant gift. In ideal form, fashion is a site of profound elasticity. That ideal appears as both a reflection of constant becoming with its attendant stimulation and as a means by which we might embrace and actively reveal such a state. As a notion, fashion offers almost pure encounter by virtue of: its existence in duration; a directionless or productively purposeless mode of proposition; its social provocation; and an intimate relationship to the body politic. Its ceaselessness and relentlessness activates imagination, memory, wonder, shock. Its proximity to lived experience actualizes degrees of phenomenological and psychological connection with a striking capacity to move us, to reflect in material form a life immanent. As a mode of generative creative practice, fashion has a seemingly inexhaustible capacity for invention, distinction and contestation. It both reflects and anticipates existing social and cultural conditions and contributes to their overhaul. Its capacity for revolution is a condition both internal to its own logic and manifest in its realization in the world. As a means for personal or individual expression it is a toolbox par excellence. Individuals are able to reflect their membership of community and to exhibit idiosyncrasies of temperament, outlook, belief or taste. Nor does fashion of itself constrain those activities – as with any good box of tools ideas and items both may be picked up, worn, discarded, modified, returned to or destroyed at the behest of the user. Fashion enables us self-actualizing exhibition whilst simultaneously pointing to the necessity of its own redundancy. Janus-faced, fashion affords a means by which we may both advance and attempt to still the ceaselessness of our becoming.
Transformation: the conjunction of crafted process and the brain as memory repository
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Little, Marlene
Acknowledging Otto Von Busch’s work, “Shapeshifting can be considered a capacity or potential of sentient beings, a capability of organisms to auto-transformations, as responsive agency to their settings.” Fusing textiles and photography, this paper considers the contribution a practice-based, conceptual approach to textiles can make to the exploration and visualization of the morphing of memory and, in the process, considers the transformative, “shapeshifting” powers at work within the human brain. A cluster of diagnostic descriptors (including vascular cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) provide reference points for causal factors and anticipated transformative outcomes associated with changes in brain function. This paper explores new territory with its linking of this “wearing” or “abrading” of memory to analogue photographic materiality and the understated significance of textile substrates or objects. All share varying degrees of disappearance or transformation: from the “gaps” that appear in recall; the physicality of the unravelling thread and thinning construction of the worn textile substrate; the “invisible” ubiquity of textiles: and the creased, faded, well-handled materiality of the analogue family snapshot or studio portrait (now increasingly supplanted by digital files). The repositioning and revaluing of a return to craft, to labour intensive, accumulative practices, play their part in this evolving narrative of creative practice. The paradigmatic shift can be expressed through the conjunction of image and substrate; process and outcome – constructing, re-imaging, unpicking, re-forming, transforming and revealing – a transformation that calls upon this twinning of concept and substrate, craft and process to explore the universal human concern of the morphing of memory housed within the shapeshifting repository of the human brain.
The fashion system and the ephemeral: ballet and costume
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) O’Brien, Caroline
This paper interrogates the theory that dress is synonymous with the identity of the ballerina. Rooted in the seventeenth century French court, classical ballet is perhaps our last vestige of aristocratic manners and civility. The early court dances were encumbered by dress of the day, arguably identifiable in its silhouette and material composition. In 1832 Marie Taglioni made a landmark contribution to the ballet, the combination of the romantic tutu and the satin slippers that allowed her to elevate onto her toes. The ballerina evolved over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as an iconic symbol of feminine virtue, permitting an earthbound mortal with a gift for movement to transcend her corporeal bonds and hover over the earth. The religion of the ballerina might be described as an art of high ideals and self-control in which a public aristocratic bearing and grace symbolize private virtue and an elevated state of being. The classical tutu is an esoteric garment, an evolution of theatrical pragmatism and ephemeral fashion, but in its lightness, sparkle and elegance, in the craft and dedication that go into its making, the tutu embodies everything that ballet is about. This paper considers the ways the tutu constructs and articulates an appropriate ballerina femininity, demonstrating that this iconic functional artefact of the ballet is beautiful in its own right. Expressive of the dichotomy inherent to the life of the ballerina, the pristine surface exists in sharp contrast to the stains of sweat and makeup combined with the tang of anxiety embedded in the layers, illuminating the signs of a ballerina’s work. The trained and honed contours of the ballerina body become transformed in the adoption of the carapace that is the bodice bordered with a wide froth of pleated netting. The garment offers a fragile, protective space that defines a boundary between the unfinished, vulnerable, leaky-at-the-margins body and the pristine and glittering seamless surface. The geometric and architectural shapes performed by the ballerina present an infinitely recognizable silhouette on the stage. The ballet costume sustains and is sustained by the aristocratic codes of manners and behaviour, and has continued to transform itself innumerable times during its history. If classical ballet is about movement, theatrical presentation and storytelling, the tutu becomes the only material evidence of the performance while the dance itself remains an ephemeral art form, leaving no record.
Triangles in silk: piecing together a practice of upcycling
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) McCorkill, Georgia
Sustainable fashion design is typically approached through the deployment of a combination of design strategies. One such strategy that enjoys popular use in the sustainable fashion lexicon is ‘‘upcycling”. Upcycling, an evolution of the term recycling, means to increase the value of something through creative intervention and enable it to re-enter the product life cycle. This term is placed in opposition to down-cycling, which implies a transformation to something of lesser value. Locating upcycling as a value term is contentious as there is no universal measure by which greater worth than the original can be assessed. Upcycling within fashion design is accomplished by various methods depending on context. Bespoke creation of one-off pieces is one method that is appropriate to collections of quality fabrics of non-uniform size and quantity. Such materials must be individually crafted into one-off garments by the designer/maker in the manner of a bespoke craftsperson. In doing this, designers draw on a unique combination of qualities including aesthetic taste, exploratory problem solving and hand making techniques. They also derive pleasure from immersion in the laborious toil of executing painstaking work. This paper seeks to tease out practices of upcycling within the bespoke designer/ maker context through reflection on a creative research practice titled “The Red Carpet Project”. This practice is focused on the design of special occasion dresses informed by principles of design for sustainability. Projects involve engaging stakeholders in the processes of designing, making and wearing special occasion dresses for significant events referred to as “red carpet” situations. These projects each use a strategy of upcycling of fabric remnants sourced from local Melbourne bridal couture businesses. The approach to upcycling, with which this practice is aligned, treats the textile source as laden with information that guides the form of the new garment; the bridal couturier uses large pattern pieces to form garment components. This results in substantial remnants that are generally triangular in shape. On observation, patterns emerge; piecing together the shapes in such a way that utilizes the drape of the fabric, and creating an end product that is aesthetically distinct from the dresses the fabric was initially intended for, are two factors that lead the design process. In sustainability terms, the justification is made that, because the textile remnants have been diverted from landfill, their use to create new garments constitutes upcycling. This paper will discuss the strategic deployment of upcycling within the context of this fashion practice, and will emphasize the value of the bespoke design system as a crucial enabler in sustainable fashion practice.
Frozen waves: exploring the transformation between sound and object
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) van Melle, Gerbrand; Marks, Stefan
In the project Frozen Waves, audio recordings are translated into physical objects and vice versa. Time is temporarily captured in space – space is released back into time. In doing so, the potential of visual music (Friedlander, 1998) and second order cybernetics (Von Foerster, 1975; Glanville, 2004) are used to develop a new experience that synthesizes sound and visual components into dynamic material form. In this “aesthetically potent environment” (Pask, 1969, p. 76), the research engages with digital ontology, sound visualization, sampling methods, and generative design practice. Similar works are Studio Realität (2008), Fischer (2010), Azzaro (2013), Paul (2012), and Ghassaei (2012). The idea explored in this project is that objects are continuously changing processes in time. Through consecutive iterations of sound recordings, sound spectrum analysis, parametric 3D model creation, and materializing methods such as 3D printing, temporary physical representations of the acoustic world around the observer surface and are recomposed. These objects can, in turn, be immaterialized back to sounds that they were generated from, albeit in a form that is modified and shaped by their transformation process. Emerging design work implies a semiotic polyvalence that is realized through a process of techno-transformative and generative methods. As such new patterns are created, comprising single parts that are restructured into rhythmic patterns. The individual samples do not act as quotes; instead they operate as generative material for systemic combination. This project aims to act as a Front End creative inquiry (Sanders & Stappers, 2012) and its purpose is to trigger the audience to consider the potentials of sound as a form of unique, material user experience.
The transformative cuts: new foundations in pattern cutting and approximations of the body
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Lindqvist, Rickard
Fashion designers are presented with a range of different principles for pattern cutting, and interest in this area has grown rapidly over the past few years, due to both the publication of a number of works dealing with the subject in different ways, and the fact that a growing number of designers emphasize experimental pattern cutting in their practices. Although a range of principles and concepts for pattern cutting are presented from different perspectives, the main body of these systems, traditional as well as contemporary, is predominantly based on a quantified approximation of the body. As a consequence, the connection between existing theories for pattern construction and the dynamic expression and biomechanical function of the body are problematic. This work explores and proposes an alternative theory for pattern cutting, which unlike existing models, takes as its point of origin the actual, variable body. As such, the research presented here is basic research. Instead of a static matrix of a nonmoving body, the proposed model for cutting garments is based on a qualitative approximation of the body, visualized through balance lines and key biomechanical points. Based on some key principles found in works by Geneviève Sevin-Doering, the proposed model for cutting is developed through concrete experiments by cutting and draping fabrics on live models. The proposed theory is an alternative principle for dressmaking, which challenges the fundamental relationship between dress, pattern making, and the body, opening up for new expressions in dress and functional possibilities for wearing.
S.A.R.A.: synesthetic augmented reality application
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Benitez, Margarita; Vogl, Markus
S.A.R.A. (synesthetic augmented reality application) is an App exploring the potential of using a mobile device as a unique and wearable musical interface. S.A.R.A. was originally developed as a standalone App to translate the surrounding environment into sounds on mobile devices (iPhone and Android), creating a digitally augmented synesthetic experience. The imagery captured via the mobile device’s onboard camera is translated into synesthetic-inspired sounds. Our interests in developing this project stemmed from the desire to explore the following research questions. Can technology be used to create a synesthetic augmented reality? What sonochromatic sound mapping should be used? Do we allow for a variety of mapping choices? Should a visual element be used as well? While investigating these research veins it led us to the realization that the S.A.R.A. App and interface would be best explored in a performance setting, therefore we arranged to collaborate with a local dance troupe that agreed to utilize S.A.R.A. as part of their repertoire. The performance version of the S.A.R.A. App is a fully interactive App that generates both its own sounds and visuals based on the camera video input and the movement of the device. The mobile device is complemented by a pico laser and mounted in a sleeve worn by each of the four dancers. S.A.R.A. becomes an extension of the dancer’s arm and allows for natural movement to occur. The role of the performers is also augmented as they are now gatekeepers of what sounds are made, as well as what images are projected, by deciding what live imagery and angles look most appealing to rebroadcast. Performers can choose to project images on themselves, their coperformers, or on to the architectural structures of the venue. This format allows for a completely new interaction with wearable technology; augmenting and mediating their performance via several technological input and output mechanisms while still maintaining choreography, as well as allowing for subjective choices during the performance. The performance setting brought up additional questions. How wearable can these devices be made in their current configuration? What is the best placement on the body for these devices that does not impede movement but allows for maximum control of the App? What does it mean when one performer wears a device like this? Multiple performers? Does wearing this device change the role or mechanism of the performer? Does the lighting need to be thought out differently for the stage and the performers? Should additional light be placed on the dancers if they can’t be lit in traditional methods? Can other dance troupes benefit from the technology? During various beta performances it became obvious that the lighting source needed to be on the performers’ bodies rather than from an external source. In response we are creating custom LED to provide a light source for the camera to pick up imagery more effectively. The LEDs were integrated into a neck cowl and the rest of the costume is designed in white to easily provide a surface to project on. Although within a set choreography, the performer’s role changes as their body’s interactions directly produce sounds. The Human Computer Interaction between the dancers and the technology as an extension of their bodies creates an altered/mediated/mitigated performance environment that is always unique to the specific performance venue. S.A.R.A. is not only an interface and an interactive software application for consumption, play, discovery and joy, but is also a jump off point for a larger discussion on transformational strategies in regards to both S.A.R.A. as a wearable musical/performance interface but additionally in the Open Source distribution of S.A.R.A. as a tool. The technology will be released open source and it is potentially possible to custom craft new versions for every performance or for other dance troupes to adapt the technology with their artistic vision. Creating the App for an existing platform device such as an iPod touch and utilizing a relatively inexpensive laser pico projector (less than $500), S.A.R.A. can be added relatively simply and cheaply as a versatile tool to their technology performance toolkit. Therefore the artwork we created provides a new tool set for other artists.
Using social media as a toolkit for co-creation when designing fashion with communities
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Lapolla, Kendra
This research introduces a transformational strategy for using social media as an access point to engage a wider community in the co-creation of fashion design. Past research in co-creative fashion has examined participatory opportunities through mass customization and crowdsourcing, but has undervalued the source of “user-generated content” from social media as an initiative in co-creative fashion design. This usergenerated content on social media platforms can be used as a co-creative toolkit to encourage active engagement in the beginning of the fashion design process. Cocreative toolkits are used to invite non-designers into the beginning of the design process and allow further creativity to trigger different feelings, emotions and desires (Sanders & William, 2001). This approach provides more than mere product selection and customization. Otto von Busch (2008, p. 32) states: Perhaps there can be forms of fashion participation, beyond mere choosing, in which we can create our own parallel but symbiotic arenas and practices. This does not mean becoming the new dictators of a new microculture, but instead of being able to experiment with radically participatory forms of fashion. This research explores a new approach for participatory fashion by addressing the question, how can social media be used to engage communities throughout the entire fashion design process? Through examination of a case study, new strategies illustrate how social media can be used for co-creation in the fashion design process. This case study employs Pinterest.com as a co-creative toolkit for a small community of young urban professionals to virtually pin inspirational ideas that inform designers throughout the design process. Designs are added to the website where the community is further able to add input. The ability for these co-creators to post inspiration, thoughts and ideas initiates a creative conversation with the designer. Further, this open dialogue continues when the co-creators eagerly “like” and comment on previous posts. This provokes a fluid visual and verbal discussion that allows for more globally accessible co-creation over time. Unlike other co-creative toolkits used in a timed session, these co-creators are guided by their own desire to contribute when and where they want. When social media is used this way as a toolkit for co-creation, communities are invited to not only be involved in the design process but also to have greater influence over the final designs.
Designing a two-phase glow-in-the-dark pattern on textiles
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Kooroshnia, Marjan
Although many research projects have explored ways of creating light- emitting fabric displays using LEDs, electro-luminescent wires, and optical fibres, fewer research projects have investigated ways of designing glow-in-the-dark surface patterns using photo-luminescent pigments in textile and fashion design. This may be due to a lack of adequate experimental exploration, as well as a lack of documented information with which to guide textile and fashion designers regarding how these pigments can be used to create such patterns. This article reports on findings based on the design properties and potentials of photo-luminescent pigments with regard to textiles. Through practice-based research, a series of design experiments were created which demonstrate ways of understanding and working with photo-luminescent pigments when designing glow-in-the-dark patterns for textiles. Through experimentation with plain and complex motifs, the influence of using photoluminescent pigments on the process of creating of a glow-in-the-dark surface pattern was examined. The results indicated that, since the colours of positive and negative spaces were reversed in dark conditions, it provided an opportunity to create tessellated surface patterns similar to those of patterns created by Maurits Cornelis Escher. Predicting the effect produced by complex printed patterns was not as easy as predicting that produced by plain printed patterns, stressing the need for tools that allowed the designer to simulate and observe the glow-in-the-dark effect before starting to print. A two-phase pattern was then created, with different expressions in daylight and darkness. For this purpose, each colour of textile pigment paste was mixed with a combination of photo-luminescent pigment and binder, and then printed on to the chosen fabric. The effect produced by the mixture in darkness was a gradation of light, like a tone or value halfway between a highlight and a dark shadow and similar to that produced by a printed, glow-in-the-dark halftone. These research experiments provide textile and fashion designers with a textile printing method that allows them to create two-phase glow-in-the-dark patterns with identical forms in daylight and darkness, but with two expressions in each. It also offers recipes for print formulation and documents results, offering a new design resource for textile surface pattern designers to promote creativity in design. In so doing, the article provides fundamental knowledge for the creation of glow-in-the-dark surface patterns on textiles.
Transformative textiles: integrating material and information in the design of sonified textiles
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Alexander, Charlotte
Digital technologies are now deeply embedded in our everyday lives, becoming seamlessly integrated with objects and materials that we engage with routinely. Digital information is no longer confined to screens as “painted bits”, but is spilling into our environments creating a seamless extension of the physical affordances of objects into the digital domain. This seamless integration is enabling information to be explored through new modes of interaction, utilizing interactive materials that can be manipulated, accessed, and programmed. The progressive, ubiquitous nature of computing is creating a need to re-evaluate the ways in which new technological emergences affect how we relate to and understand the world around us. A key area of material technologies development contributing to this seamlessness is “interactive textiles”, also known as smart textiles or “e-textiles”. These materials are the amalgamation of digital technologies and textiles, allowing materials the ability to sense, react, and display. This utilization of digital media within our materiality is producing textiles that are no longer mute, but are responsive, amplified through a number of outputs, including light and sound. This transformation of materials from passive to responsive is being driven by the informational capacity of embedded technologies. Küchler (2008) describes e-textiles as existing not simply as material but also informational. This material-informational duality highlights a need to understand the way in which we relate to material in our changing technological world, and a closer consideration of our “dual citizenships” between our physical (material) and digital (informational) spaces. Through a practice-led investigation, utilizing the processes of the creation, prototyping and performance of sonified textiles, this paper presents current research into the relationship between textile as material and information and the way in which these dimensions may be aligned successfully through design. It also draws on key theoretical texts and the work of other designers. Considering closely this transformation of textiles, this investigation intends to understand the evolving relationship between material and information; the physical and the digital.
Smart textiles as raw materials for design
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Dumitrescu, Delia; Nilsson, Linnéa; Persson, Anna; Worbin, Linda
Materials fabricate the designed artefact, but they can also play an important role in the design process; as a medium or method used to develop the design. Textiles can, with their soft and flexible properties, be easily transformed and altered in numerous ways; for example, by cutting, folding or printing on the material. This transformative character makes textiles interesting sketching media for surface explorations when designing artefacts. The development of transformable materials; for example, fusible yarns and colour changing pigments, have expanded these inherent transformative qualities of textiles and have opened up the design field of smart textiles. Accordingly, this new material context has created a new area for textile designers to explore, where it is possible to enhance and play with the alterable character of their textiles, and control their transformation through physical manipulation and programming. However, these expanded transformative properties also open up a new task for textile designers; to design "smart textiles as raw materials for design". By this term we mean, textiles that are not finished in their design but that can be developed and enhanced when they take part in a product or space design process. In this article, we explore and start to define what smart textiles as raw materials for design can be, and look at how these materials can come into and add something to another design process. The foundation for this exploration is a number of textile examples from the “Smart Textiles sample collection” and our experiences when developing and designing with them. (The Smart Textiles sample collection is a range of textiles that is designed and produced by the Smart Textile Design Lab, to give students, designers and researchers direct access to different types of smart textiles). The possibilities and limitations of smart textiles as raw materials for design are explored by looking at the textile examples from two perspectives: firstly, by looking at the considerations that come with designing this type of textile design, and secondly by looking at what these transformative textiles can bring to another design process. Each example is analyzed and classified according to what transformable design variables for structure and surface change can be embedded in the textile design, and what design variables this subsequently creates for a design process that uses these materials i.e., describing what type of transformation different examples of smart textiles introduce to the design process/design space; whether the change is reversible or irreversible, and whether the change occurs through physical or through digital manipulation of the material. This article ends with a discussion of how smart textiles in the form of raw materials for design could influence how we design textiles and how we design with textiles. Can transformative materials enrich material explorations in a design process? Can further development and alteration of the material design be introduced or defined by the textile designer? Could smart textiles as raw materials for design open up a stronger connection between the design of textiles and the design of the product or spaces where they will be used?
Metamorphoric fashion: a transformative practice
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Sgro, Donna
Transformation is embedded in the growth of an organism, while fashion, highly responsive to changing social and physical environments, rides the current of flux like a dreamer wandering through darkness. Through my fashion practice, attempts are made to reflect upon, expand and make possible inroads into the translation of this creative movement, from inspiration to mixed garment and textile outcomes. This involves engaging the imagination of possible futures, new approaches, and unknown outcomes, through mixed material expressions. Translating the life cycle of an organism, which is highly adaptive, evolutionary and responsive, this work forms part of my PhD study, “Metamorphoric Fashion”, being undertaken at RMIT University, Melbourne. Using a practice-led research methodology, which draws upon mixed creative methods, my research attempts to engage with the uncovering of imaginative potentials of fashion and textile processes. The concept of transformation leads this investigation, and initially a study of butterfly metamorphosis was undertaken. This involved “fashion-designer-becoming-lepidopterist”, and engaged a movement between the ordinarily disparate worlds of ecology and creative practice. Using mediums of photography and drawing, a series of transitions were recorded in which the organism underwent both transitional and metamorphic change. Through these methods, meditations on relationships between nature-culture become possible, as thinking about ecology enters the creative process. Through drawing, a series of stylizations developed which recorded the imaginative thinking time, line by line. My particular fashion practice is in the process of transformation and diversification, reflecting the nature of the metamorphic phenomenon, and the particular interpretations of the butterfly study that an individual approach enables. Aiming to uncover the ways in which the practice is able to accommodate these transformations, forms part of this study. Why this might be important for fashion practice more generally perhaps, is because it identifies a type of practice that attempts to evolve itself, to become something it does not yet know. The research aims to capture this state of becoming, and the perpetual sense of movement.

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