“The Culture” Dress with Afroditi Psarra
"The Culture" series is a collaboration between media artist Afroditi Psarra and architect Dafni Papadopoulou that aims to combine electronic handicrafts with parametric design and digital fabrication on an ongoing research on wearables.
The garment series is inspired by Iain M. Banks' space operas and his eclectic imagery of "The Culture", a future civilization of humans that live together with sophisticated machines in a world where everything is sentient. The garments can be perceived as living organisms that respond to the user's vital functions though movement. The garment's sleeves are designed in Rhino and Grasshoper and have been laser cut on leather and then assembled by hand in complex structures.
The wearables incorporate embedded Arduino microcontrollers and lightweight actuators created using muscle wire, kapton film and pvc strips, as well as a 3d printed earing that incorporates an pulse sensor.
The project was developed during the Maker-In-Residence program at WeMake, Milan´s Makerspace and was curated by Zoe Romano.The blouse sleeves and the dress patterns have been created with the valuable help of fashion designer Sara Savian and the laser-cutting procedure was assisted by Claudia Scarpa.
