f.o.r.m.e. fashion objects respecting material ecology

https://vimeo.com/378383490 (Please cut and paste in separate browser)

As an experiment, upon the idea of garment transfer, and within the design spirit of Chitose Abe, an admired fashion designer who created the Sacai label, I made a short film showing two models whose outfits would change bit by bit, parts of their garments would deconstruct, perhaps move to the other person, parts of other items, conceivably from random people walking past, attaching themselves onto their original outfits, sometimes worn or draped in new ways, and slowly a new silhouette would form, all the time the clothes would essentially communicate with other clothes, just as whole items are layered, and as each piece embodies certain meanings, new clashes of energies fuse together, making new fashion identities in which the wearer can engage, and all the while engaging with each other through fashion, in a non-verbal gestural way, that can be spontaneous, confronting, humourous, and even liberating.

At the heart of what it means to be human (in the best way) in a digital world, is making connections and making meaning, being compassionate, sensitive, reflective and supportive. Fast fashion makes a mockery of superficial meanings and “looks” which circulate at rates which are unsustainable for the planet while building up many-storied piles of garments, once objects of desire selling a perfect world, temporary identities now ignored and dismissed, embodiments of the cycle of attachment and detachment of rampant consumerism. How much real connection and value did they generate in the wearers’ lives is a matter of debate. From a set of unwanted clothes, which were on their way to landfill, this experiment showed that there is a lot of connection that can be made through fashion, by playing with the idea of archetype transferral.

Bringing the analog process of dressing the models to making a video, which was a rough iPhone video of scrolling on the screen, was an attempt to move from the analog back to the digital, but to do so in a way that was what we think being human is compared to the digital, rudimentary, unsophisticated, imperfect, but full of emotional richness perhaps. The myth of this dichotomy was revealed to me through my experience working with the models on the day. There was a rich sequence of verbal interchange, where I could feel the models’ experience of wearing clothes, of being dressed, of losing control over their outfits, and opening their eyes to new ways of wearing garments. Anything but rudimentary, the analog human communication process that has evolved over thousands of years includes subtle cues that can be seen through eye contact, body proximity, gestures, and sounds, even smells. The clothes had scents from past wearers, a source of humour and repulsion as the session began as each garment evoked anonymous strangers, evoking more speculation and associative imagery. 

The body, as the site around which fashion centres, like fashion, with its ability to attract and repel, imbuing clothing with scent, artificial and natural, which has also interacted with public areas, then over a certain period of time, bacteria multiplying, decaying, merging and interacting on a minuscule scale, speaking through the clothes.

The design process became more collaborative, another myth of the designer as fully directive and all-knowing and in control, between the models, myself as designer and photographer interacting with my own thought processes, inspired by other designers, the garments and accessories themselves seemingly suggesting possibilities with their mere presence, and to a lesser extent the presence of music in the background or lack thereof. 

In Jane Bennett’s vision of Vibrant Matter, it really was a vibrant session.

Kate Fletcher’s 2016 book Craft of Use: Post Growth Fashion talks about slow fashion methods of creating narratives and stories from long term wear, hand-me-down clothing, beloved worn pieces that grow a soul through repeated wear and tear (and care). In a sense, any intellectual activity and exploration of clothes that do not require repeated consumption in order to reach a more meaningful level of being and existing is a kind of craft of use. 

For who are we as humans but an amalgam of each other, our personalities and identities fluid and variable, ambiguous and indeterminate, suggestible to new fashion identities. In a future where the digital might help us transfer parts of our fashion identities to each other, we might be more empowered to connect on a more meaningful level.

See full process at https://issuu.com/rosannali/docs/transfer

References

Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter. Durham: Duke University Press.

Fletcher, K. (2016). Craft of use: Post Growth Fashion. Abingdon: Routledge.

Data, the collection and communication of, the interpretation of, the value of...

Overlap 4, Digital Collage, Rosanna Li, 2019.

Overlap 3, Digital collage, Rosanna Li 2019.

Overlap 2, Digital Collage, Rosanna Li 2019.

Overlap, Digital collage, Rosanna Li, 2019

The idea of the extended self has also come into play within the dialectic around the digital and analogue divide, suggesting that although our identities were pre-internet era, constructed wholly within the analogue realm, today with digital technology and social media, there is a new extended sense of self and identity borne of transmediated processes, those which bridge the digital and analogue environments. Although one could argue over the authenticity of such an identity, it is an observable social phenomenon that has been remarked by sociologists.

In discipline like fashion that deals with the creation of self-identity, this is a highly relevant article that looks at emerging technologies, the Internet of Things, our networked connectivity and ubiquitous computing world and how our sense of self and the way that is constructed now lies more in a liminal space between the virtual and the real. 

The resulting sense of self, Elwell argues, rather than a whole construct within an analog world, is a kind of existential blurred composite of digital and analog. Whereas in the early days of the internet, going online often meant putting on a mask within a psychological second self, one’s “online identity”, the Internet today is far more integrated into our lives making the experience qualitatively distinct, where offline and online identities are more closely linked within a single integrated habitat involving both physical and computation structures. 

The nature of this new sense of self includes a reversal of private and public spheres, whereby one’s innermost inclinations, likes and hates that form our private subjectivity are published into the public sphere, and is often a conglomerate of multiple digital selves from LinkedIn, Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook and so on. 

Elwell then goes onto elaborate on the main characteristics of this new sense of self: integrated, dispersed, episodic and interactive. These characteristics will be useful as a framework for analyzing my own fashion work that must respond to the current zeitgeist, a world where users/wearer/consumers/individuals/transmediated real-analog identities crave interaction and socialize in new ways befitting of new analog-digital ecosystems. 

Implications for My Practice: 

As an analog practical experiment, I would like to try gathering pom-poms, representing enlarged particles, and have two people walk past each other transferring pom poms one to another… Any highly manual, non-technical, clunky system of transferral is fine. 

As another analog experiment that represents tags that store information, I might like to have information, messages, that get transferred from one garment to another.

As a third test, to have two garments which are mixed together, perhaps using weaving techniques in the vein of Victor and Rolf’s Vagabond Collection, but on a vertical plane rather than horizontal.

As a fourth practical experiment, digital collage, blending layers or garments to show how they might transfer in movement.

References:

Alluring (2015), Ellie Niblock.

Ellie Niblock, a UK artist currently based in London studies emotions and personalities and conveys these through her conglomerations of matter, liquid plastic, foam, resin and clay. In any contemplation of emotions and matter, Niblock appears to have been able to capture essences of emotion within her work, often miniature amorphous blobs which are frozen moments of materials, colours and textures intermingling and negotiating dominance, clashing and harmonising, creating new energies which celebrate imperfection and liquid to solid morph-states. From the point of view of Jane Bennett’s material vibrancy, these are concentrated ball of live emotion that evoke a simultaneous sense of mystery and familiarity. Each composite creation is a representation of a human soul, each with its own unique and distinct character.

In a flat 2D digital world (and the image above is still 2D representation of the original 3D object), we crave the visceral, the sensual and tangible, imperfection and adhoc-ness that is ever present in the real world and that is part of what it means to be human. Vice versa, the real world can also be enhanced by the digital. It is this interplay which positions our sense of self in the liminal in-between state that crosses the virtual and physical. 

Look 40, Comme des Garçons Spring 2011 Ready-to-Wear

Inspired on a theme of multiple personalities certain pieces in this collection by Rei Kawakubo fit into my theme of transference of matter,  fluid states which already exist in the real world in a non-tangible sense, in that we as social creatures rub off on one another, and are affected by each other. 

Conversation (1995), Rosslynd Piggott, National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, 2019.

Conversation is a textile work by Rosslynd Piggott, two cotton long sleeve tunics hung facing each other a few metres apart and joined through embroidered text, connected threads and sleeves which rest along the floor.

It is a work which concentrated on communication, connections, and an inseparable quality between two souls, perhaps silent but legible conversation through embroidered text, fragmented words that travel back and forth. The threads are red, perhaps a homonym of “read”, red being the colors of blood, perhaps a painful conversation that nevertheless bonds the two souls together. We can easily imagine the red threads are wireless data that can travel freely through space.

The conveyance of emotion through clothing is nothing new, through colour and texture fashion is essentially an emotional medium, and yet usually emanates from one outfit with the same message to everyone. Clothing which can communicate emotions from one person to another, and back again in a way which can be flexible, mutable and changing would appear to be a possibility with digital technologies and/or clothing with transient states of matter, than can morph from liquid to solid to gas, which might break off or attach from one person to another would be exciting to explore.

Joggers who pass one another can now wear garments that light up in passing for safety.

If clothes could communicate more literally than they currently do, what would they say? Could it be the next stage of externalising and making public our innermost feelings and thoughts which has already begun through blogs and social media posts, and to what extent is that a healthy or ethical eventuality?

In terms of technology that would enable such an occurrence, data tagging currently exists where tags are embedded in clothing with the ability to store data.

Thermal responsive inks are also used to print on clothing connected to apps which can track temperatures over time of a garment, mainly for monitoring safe transport of products.

Paula Bertola from the Polytechnic University of Milan and Jose Teunissen from the London College of Fashion have written and joint overview of the current state of digital transformation within the fashion industry, “Fashion 4.0. Innovating fashion industry through digital transformation”. We are currently in the fourth Industrial Revolution, where new modes of production and consumption are transforming all major industrial systems including fashion, which has been at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, the difference being the prioritization of sustainability since the overproduction of goods, brought controversial detrimental effects to the environment in exchange for short term gain.

They envision an entirely transparent vertical and horizontal production system within and across organizations, in order to make smart factories, smart networks and smart products, ie. those which align closely with consumer needs (highly customized). Bertola and Teunissen argue that instead of highly skilled traditional artisans and high level engineering as does exist in several luxury brands, what is instead needed in the new paradigm “augmented workers and advanced craftsmen able to mix different sets of skills where human unique attributes of creativity and manual dexterity can be augmented by digital technologies and devices”.

I learned that in the future, we can be semi-manual, artistic workers working in conjunction with digital technologies which can help us ideate and execute work to new levels. For my own practice this means it is not so important to be a master of construction techniques, but to be able to apply vision through the creative process with digital technologies. 

Just as the Australian author Helen Garner wrote that there is no way to correctly read a book, that a book can be read back to front, in snippets, fragmentary and dislocated, in no particular order, much is the same with my research methodology, which takes on a kind of organic process, mixing, traditional database searches, conversations with friends, professors to bounce ideas and gain new leads, dreaming and speculating on new avenues around the topic, my methodology can be summed up as an experimental, exploratory, and sometimes tangential process, which is gauged and directed by intuition and emotion. That which is stimulating and relevant must register both intellectually and emotionally, and yet at times in the creative process, the mind does an extra inexplicable leap, and that is okay, fuelling the mystery of a wider disconnect and how to rationalize that.  

Through this process what has started off at the digital-analog relationship is taking on new facets like control, collaboration, extended senses of self, matter and states of matter... Design itself is also part of my methodology, with experiments in blended techniques, analysing my own work, and being inspired by the work of others. Analog creations can suggest digital solutions and vice versa. 

I have wondered whether Surrealism is a potentially justifiable methodology. I might have thought to actually physically eat and chew my articles, tearing off pieces of paper, catching glimpses of text in motion, diagonal, crumpled and distorted, and feel the way that might influence my thinking. Not that I have, but I might.

The artprint  “In the Beginning”, by Margaret Ashman, Bankside Gallery, London, 2019, represents an image of a young woman with her eyes closed, wearing a sleeveless dress fitted to the upper torso, extending down to the edges of the frame, presumably to her toes, split high at the side. Fine black dots undulating over the dress to all corners of the image reminiscent of pointillism, where solid forms are broken up into particles. In this way the dotted texture evokes gas particles, and if it is a gas, we have a sense of etheral extension of garment from the body outwards with an indefinite ending. Perhaps particles from fabric are dispersing through movement. What would it be like, garments that vaporise, wholly or partially...?! Perhaps made of solidified perfume that slowly disintegrates, wafting atmospheres around the wearer as they move...? 

Phase transition is a scientific term used to describe temperature and environmental conditions at which a particular substance changes from one state (liquid/gas/solid) to another, and in the area of textiles for clothing, much research has focused on thermal regulating properties of certain substances which are then applied as coatings, or the monitoring of bodily moisture through the airways or skin pores to control micro-climates around the body for maximum comfort (Habchi, C., Ghali, K. and Ghaddar, N. 2014; Salaün, F. et al. (2010);  Yoo, H., Lim, J. and Kim, E. 2013) . The idea of matter moving from one state to another in this sense has not been applied to our own extended sense of self however. 

Could vapours hold colour, creating hues of movement as a person moves through a crowd..? If that were multiplied, with feint ribbons of colours marking the paths of various pedestrians, intersecting, transferring colours and patterns to each other, mixing and maybe matching, maybe clashing, making connections, fresh connections, ways of feeling less alienated in a competitive world. Ways of connecting that rise above traditional language, perhaps, that unite people of disparate cultures in an urban setting. 

Literally rubbing shoulders. 

Where fashion’s purpose has long been to create and individualise and make more distinct one person from another, to raise the status in society, to construct a sense of self and identity, how those dynamics shift with garments that do not stick to one wearer, that are negotiated and exchanged in proximity of movement, negotiated perhaps by the materials themselves rather than the wearer, where the wearer has relinquished control and searches for their identity through the composite nature of their interactions with surrounding  bodies. 

The idea of the extended self has also come into play within the dialectic around the digital and analogue divide, suggesting that although our identities were pre-internet era, constructed wholly within the analogue realm, today with digital technology and social media, there is a new extended sense of self and identity borne of transmediated processes, those which bridge the digital and analogue environments. Although one could argue over the authenticity of such an identity, it is an observable social phenomenon that has been remarked by sociologists.

As an analog practical experiment, I would like to try gathering pom-poms, representing enlarged particles, and have two people walk past each other transferring pom poms one to another...

As another analog experiment that represents tags that store information, I might like to have information, messages, that get transferred from one garment to another.

As a third test, to have two garments which are mixed together, perhaps using weaving techniques in the vein of Victor and Rolf’s Vagabond Collection, but on a vertical plane rather than horizontal. 

As a fourth practical experiment, digital collage, blending layers or garments to show how they might transfer in movement.

Habchi, C., Ghali, K. and Ghaddar, N. (2014) ‘Improved thermal performance of face mask using phase change material’, Textile Research Journal, 84(8), pp. 854–870. doi: 10.1177/0040517513509874. 

 Salaün, F. et al. (2010) ‘Development of Phase Change Materials in Clothing Part I: Formulation of Microencapsulated Phase Change’, Textile Research Journal, 80(3), pp. 195–205. doi: 10.1177/0040517509093436.

Li, R (2019) Video footage outside Tate Modern, London.

Bubbles, encapsulated gas with liquid, the surface of which carries color, retractions of light, which simultaneously contain and is absent of matter. The surface of a bubble conveys a range of colours through light refraction, and its transparency conveys the scenery behind it. The soapy liquid binds water particles for a period of time as the air is encapsulated into an ever elongating enclosed state, pulled by gravity, pulled by the bubble frame (strings), moved by the breeze, pushed by the internal air particles, the giant bubble makes internal rooms, floats for a while and snaps and pops into frothy soapy bubbles that slap the ground and turn white. The changing states of water in this scenario are mesmerizing. What I have learnt from observing the phenomena of a man creating large bubbles along the London Thames River, with onlookers and children marveling at the emerging forms, is that the fascination is as much about the expansion and evolution of form from nothing to the transient nature of the resulting form, how easily it is popped, which is the invitation to interact, and the surprise when the form suddenly disappears. 

For my own practice, I am imagining a way liquid bubbles that hold gas, can grow out of a silhouette, an outfit, a garment, a body. It could be a literal bubble, it could be a bubble of light, that has substance and is at the same time devoid of substance, that might be popped, switched off and on, morphed, pending the wearers’ proximity to others, so that the outfit invites interaction and responds to interaction, thereby encouraging connectivity, like the internet, connectivity in an analog realm in a physical way between strangers who move past each other.

This would mean that the outfit you left home with would be different from the one you returned with, that at least digitally, your garment would have picked up extra information from interactions in the outside world, that could suggest a different colour or pattern on a base garment. 

The digital world of virtual reality is an imperfect mimic of the physical world, and brings into possibility playing with physical states themselves.

Matter in different states also behave differently, where solid, liquid and gas have different properties. Liquid turning to a solid, solid to liquid, liquid to gas, gas to liquid.

How then might this inform my next fashion experiments..

Imagine clothes which fully or partly off-gas, perhaps onto a passerby, so that when you go out, you will constantly be changing your clothes depending on who you pass, bits might rub off from you to another, and from another to you. Interpersonal transfer of bodywear. Perhaps as a dance routine where garments are modular and exchanged through movement and interaction. Perhaps where one garment would ordinarily end at the limb of one body, actually extends over to the limbs of another, a displacement of edges, that mismatch with the wear, than blur the lines and cross the boundaries between two bodies.  As gaseous mist, fashion had already embraced the scent of perfume. How about colour or pattern in gas form, and how would that interact or be worn? Could the texture alone be transferred, or pattern..?

Augmented reality may be one way to add/alter the perception of the material state of a garment. There are examples of augmented reality in fashion design

Imagine liquid garments dripping onto the body, off the body, onto the ground, onto furniture, stretching in form, like a Dali clock. 

And then there is light, and projections, which have no form. 

Material vibrancy as a concept has been raised by leading academic Jane Bennett, the idea that real object project a presence that has a real emotional pull. As objects and products and even waste matter build on the planet, we encounter collisions of various materials, the collisions also mixing to create new energies and flavours of emotional impact.

Tangible, visceral, 3D, objects in the analogue are in a constant state of change, whether atoms and molecules of matter mix together to form recognizable products we buy or begin the process of decomposition and disintegration, off-gassing, crumbling, scratched or soiled.. 

In a digital environment, things on a screen may convey a sense of tactility through vicarious imagination, and yet they exist in a sterile untouchable space. One might argue there is still emotional pull, by images of things but they have less embodied presence in a spatial environment as 2D images.