Shapeshifting: A Conference on Transformative Paradigms of Fashion and Textile Design

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https://hdl.handle.net/10292/8553

This publication presents 30 selected papers developed from an initial 47 presentations made at the Shapeshifting Conference held in Auckland in April 2014. The conference explored transformative paradigms in fashion and textile design through four thematic frameworks including Ambiguous & Automated Forms; Surface & Structural Transformations; The Fashion System & The Ephemeral; and Transformational Strategies. Shapeshifting, as a process of change and responsive agency is considered in these papers as a concern with cultures of transformation, navigations of the social and technological and the transversal hacker who unpicks and revises in order to contest what is current and deliver our future.

Editors: Frances Joseph, Mandy Smith, Miranda Smitheram and Jan Hamon

All 30 papers selected for publication were double blind peer reviewed by an international panel of fashion and textile experts and academic reviewers.

The publication has been produced by the Textile and Design Laboratory and Colab at the Auckland University of Technology, February 2015.

ISBN: 978-1-927184-27-1

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 30

The beast trilogy: an evolving experiment in fashion ideation
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Splawa-Neyman, Tania; Wilde, Danielle; Mitford Ha, Winnie; Lacey, Jordan
Masses of leathery membranes, wild furs and etched bones. Intangible caresses of bodily fields. Sonic skins stretching on expanded skeletal structures. Answers to the question: What does The Beast unleash? This question, when posed as a series of provocations, acts as catalyst within a setting in which practitioners as pedagogues set the conditions for beastly emergence. As a conceptual device, The Beast realizes unthought potential by forcing interactions with the unfamiliar. When The Beast is channelled through the medium of unyielding materials, an unconventionally framed body, or unidentified sound, the setting for inevitable altercations is established. The Beast does not submit easily. It intimidates, fights and retaliates in response to the practitioners’ grappling and desire to easily know. The process enables a shift from familiar actions, thoughts and processes to states of “unknowing” and affords new, unexpected and surprising outcomes. The asking of “what is beastly?” further coaxes The Beast and moves seeking beyond physical realms. Within the individual, the qualities of “beast” and “the beastly” invoke curiosity and discomfort through searching made internalized. In this circumstance unfamiliarity emerges and the hunter becomes the hunted. Framed within the context of fashion practice; centred around the “body” and “the bodily” and inherently expressed through making: how do we contend with these emergent beastly qualities? Can they be tamed or do they tame us? Investigations are led by moving, making, and through the expanded practice of listening. As a framework for expanding possibilities of practice, The Beast was tested within a series of undergraduate fashion design studios. Through the outcomes emanating from the trilogy of studios, this paper examines The Beast as an innovative tool for fashion ideation. As an enigma defying definition, The Beast pushes to unpack unknown imaginings, blur disciplinary boundaries and irreversibly reshape practice.
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.
Enabling design and business innovation through new textile technologies
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Joseph, Frances; Heslop, Peter
Textile production initiated the first industrial revolution, with James Hargreaves’ invention of the Spinning Jenny in 1766 introducing the beginning of systems of mechanized mass production. More recently, the development of new forms of digital manufacturing has given rise to a “New Industrial Revolution”. This paper considers the introduction of digital textile technologies in relation to this new “maker” economy and to traditional industrial textile and apparel design and production systems. While factors such as high investment costs, technology limitations and the need for specialized technical knowledge initially restricted the uptake of new technologies by traditional textile and fashion design manufacturing companies, technology developments are overcoming many of these problems. However, a lack of access and usability has limited engagement and innovation by designers, makers and technology entrepreneurs. This paper discusses the achievements, opportunities, limitations and impacts of work conducted through a university-based research and development centre that provides access to advanced technologies and associated technical, research and design expertise in areas of digital textile printing and seamless knitting for product development, sampling and training. Drawing on case studies developed from client and staff interviews, product and market analysis, recent theoretical writings and a contextual review, the paper will consider ways in which these technologies are helping designers and companies to do things differently and create value. More immediate and localized design development strategies can support on demand production of specialized, high value products locally and internationally. They have also provided more effective design and production methods to other industries; for example, costume designers for film, theatre and television companies. This facility also provides support for new areas of application and new manufacturing processes, for example in the areas of shaped, seamless knit and e-textiles. Through these studies, traditional fashion production and market problems such as remote global supply chains, the separate and highly specialized roles of designers and technicians in the knitwear industry, the production of pre and post-market textile waste and the minimizing of stock levels are reconsidered. Business concepts and strategies, enabled by new forms of digital manufacturing are related to approaches discussed in the case studies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Imaginative voyaging: fashion practice as a ‘site’ for wonder and enchantment
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Chant, Armando
The aim of this paper is to explore the state of wonder within a transitional and transformative context and its potential to inform experimental fashion practices. In particular it will focus on the emotionally generative possibilities that wonder and enchantment can have on our experience of fashion. Wonder itself can take a number of forms, whether it entails being “wonder struck” by an event or something that has been seen, or to wonder as in to question, to be curious, to harbour doubt. It is this questioning and openness that is the basis of wonder’s connection to the artistic process and this paper examines how it can be applied within a fashion context. This approach to creative practice and its connection to wonder has its theoretical foundations in the work of authors such as Greenblatt and Kosky. The state of wonder itself has the potential to engage our imagination with fashion “encounters”. Familiar enchanting sites for encounter and possible wonder sites within a fashion context include the fashion show, which in recent times has expanded to encompass installation and presentation formats. These shows and their inducement of a potential sense of wonder, owe much to their large scale and performative nature. Examples of this include the presentations and collaborative projects of designers and practitioners such as Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan. Here the fashion “experience” is transient and ephemeral in nature, where those present gain the full impact or experience of the encounter. As Andrew Bolton (Bolton & Koda, 2011), referencing Alexander McQueen’s immersive and sometimes confronting presentations states, “McQueen validates powerful emotions as compelling and undeniable sources of aesthetic experiences”. This paper explores how, rather than the ephemeral fashion experience or “moment” being seen as a final outcome, one which is the domain of large scale fashion brands, it can also have relevance to small scale experimental fashion practices and within this context be present within the design process itself. The paper focuses on exploring the transitional “moments” or potential encounters that happen within the fashion design process for both practitioners and their audience. The paper reframes the fashion design process as a series of potential wonder sites, where further creative exploration can occur, not within the clearly defined areas of a traditional practice, but those that exist in the shadows or void. This reframing is further enhanced within the context of an interdisciplinary approach, where the oscillation between mediums, creative approaches and technologies has offered opportunity for innovation and for traditional approaches to fashion practice to be broken down. In conclusion the paper explores how an interdisciplinary approach to fashion practice provides a destabilized or disruptive experience of the fashion process, therefore opening up possibilities for our engagement with wonder in fashion, thereby potential sites of fashion encounters are expanded and go beyond traditional final outcomes.
In high heels on shifting ground: fashioning lives in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Cie, Christina
Clothing serves as a marker of identity, but how do you dress when you have nothing left but the clothes that you were wearing when you had to run? Who are you, when dressed entirely in someone else’s choice of clothes? Does the resourcefulness necessary for self-expression under such circumstances also reinforce our ability to cope and survive on a more than material level? What can losing everything help us to remember? Taking the earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand as its starting point, this article will examine the usefulness of fashion, sometimes dismissed as a “frivolous” concern, during times of crisis. It will consider examples from these and other catastrophic events, considering how individuals and communities have used fashion as an expression of resilience and to defy the devastation wrought by disaster (Howell, 2012; Labrum, McKergow, & Gibson, 2007). The article will be structured to consider the “epicentre” of the effect of the earthquake, as on the individual, the wider social ramifications as the tremors ripple out, and the aftershocks that can continue to disrupt attempts at re-establishing daily patterns. “Habitus” is defined as a state of mind by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu & Nice 1977). It is what we practice, what has been “preached” to us, and what we have picked up from our surroundings. However, this mental space, a culmination of personal and cultural memory, requires a habitat, a physical place for its expression and evolution. Analysis of the success of the temporary Re:START mall, created from shipping containers, offers a case study on the role of fashion, as retail and spectacle, in the vigorously debated regeneration of this city. Workplaces, offices, bars and clubs serve as venues for interaction, identification and individuality, but if we dress up to go out, what happens when there is nowhere left to go to? If the street is gone, how could a shop serve “street style”, and act as a site for social interaction as well as retail and revenue? What role can fashion play in reinvigorating public spaces and events in a devastated area? From individual efforts to community initiatives, what is the role of fashion in the recovery of a city, and the cultural life of a region?
MakeUse V2: digital textile technology for user modifiable zero waste fashion
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) McQuillan, Holly
The evolving discourse on zero waste fashion design addresses justifications and approaches for designing and making these garments in ways that attempt to fit within the existing structure of fashion education and industry. However, little has been explored about the relationship between the outcomes of zero waste fashion design and the potentially elevated fashion user experience it might enable. This paper and associated creative works explore the emerging field of enriching the fashion user experience: the post-production and post-retail environment; an area that historically the fashion industry has given little attention to. MakeUse builds on Kate Fletcher’s work within Local Wisdom, specifically in the context of what she terms the Craft of Use of clothing, and the application of knowledge and skill which enables us to “mitigate … intensify, and adapt” clothing to suit our lives. MakeUse places zero waste fashion practice in the context of user practice, where the user becomes an agent in both the design and ongoing use and modification of the garment. Through actions and opportunities facilitated by the designer, an enriched designer/maker/user relationship is possible. Using methods such as digital textile print and embroidery, embedded instructional material, online support and distributed production, MakeUse provides user modifiable zero waste fashion products and an associated product use experience that acknowledges both the opportunities and limitations each user brings, while intensifying their skills, knowledge, needs and desires.
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.
Past, present and future: transformational approaches to utilizing archives for research, learning and teaching
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Britt, Helena; Stephen-Cran, Jimmy; Shaw, Alan
This article focuses on transformational approaches to utilizing archives in the creation of textile and textile-related products. The existing context in terms of historical resource and archive use by the textile industry and for textile-based creative practice, research, learning and teaching, is discussed. Literature, projects and examples reviewed indicate reproductive, adaptive and transformative approaches to working from historical and archival resources. In the context of this article reproduction involves copying, adaptation refers to alterations and transformation involves complete change in form, nature or appearance. A deficit in existing studies surrounding articulation of approaches to archive utilization is identified. Three projects undertaken at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) are presented as case studies, which seek to fill the identified gap and contribute to existing research. For each case study, the aims and contributions to research are described and an overview of the project context and methodology is provided. Findings in terms of approaches to archive utilization are discussed, as are the outputs and outreach activities resulting from the projects, which ensures that to some extent, examination of the past informs creative activity in the present and impacts upon the future creation of textiles. The paper concludes by discussing how the case studies have evidenced varying approaches to archive utilization and proposes recommendations to formulate forthcoming strategies and activities.
Re-shaping the process of design & making: shifting the relationship between designer and client in the context of digital knitwear design and production systems
(Textile and Design Lab and Colab at Auckland University of Technology, 2014) Farren, Anne; Yang, Sooyung
New technologies have created a gap in designer knowledge and understanding of the design capabilities and production potential of new CAD software driven equipment. Significantly, within some sectors of the fashion industry, there is an assumption that CAD software run production technologies can eliminate the need for a designer, with production-based technologies “driven” by a technician. Our work with the garment industry supports the emergence of an assumption amongst production machinery manufacturers that CAD software systems can eliminate design input and associated costs (Mohammed, May, & Alavi, 2008; Eckert, Cross, & Johnson, 2000; Eckert, Kelly, & Stacey, 1999). CAD driven production technologies such as the Shima Seiki WholeGarment® knitting system have “predefined garment templates” (preregistered garment shapes in Shima Seiki’s terms) embedded in the software. The manufacturer of this machine claims that these preregistered garment shapes can minimize the creativity gap between the designer and technician. However it is our experience that the system is too complex for cost effective implementation of design innovation. Recent developments in CAD driven knitwear production systems have resulted in changes to the conventional relationships between the client, the designer and the technician. In this context, we have identified a new role, the “designer-interpreter”. Designer-interpreter denotes a professional knitwear designer with additional training in managing computerized seamless knitting machines. Research carried out at Curtin University has identified this as a creative role that is required to optimize design and production using computerized flat V-bed seamless knitting systems. Within current applications of computerised V-bed seamless knitting systems, the textile and garment design processes are fully integrated and cannot be effectivelymanipulated in isolation. There is a current assumption that a knitwear technician can be a design-interpreter. However the designer-interpreter is required to facilitate the creative integration of textile and garment design. This is achieved through the application of their specialist knowledge of knit design, CAD driven software and machine operation. The designer-interpreter can work with either another designer or the end user to develop fully customized garments. With the creative support of the designer-interpreter, a consumer without any design background effectively becomes a “designer”. This system repositions the relationship between designer, manufacturer and consumer. This paper presents research carried out by the Fashion Design & Research HUB at Curtin University into the creative potential of the design process using computerized flat V-bed seamless knitting technology for the client with little or no garment design experience. It reflects on observations made during workshops, of the changing nature in the relationships between designer-interpreter, client, design process and technology.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.

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