Studio III - Digital Skins INEPTUS QUOD FUTURUM
For studio this semester we had to construct a wearable Tech costume, the brief was given to us by World of Wearable Arts. The aim of this is to envision on how humans would Approach the costume from an 80′s circus, aiming for a bleak 2084 setting point of view.
The main ideas that we had to focus on were: A: Trans-human, using the technology factor to change, transform the human body. B: Post-human, theory of human existence and how they could be more than just a human. |
The final design ended up being a huge sphere that would be attached to the model as a whole, this would then project old black & white cartoons. This idea came up through thinking about the current society and their obsession of media, this idea was like a portable TV production for the children in the future for watching cartoon anywhere physically not through a digital screen.
Contextual Statement
The digital skins paper this year gave us an opportunity in participating in the World of Wearable Arts competition. We had to create a costume that incorporated aspects of how the circus would be visualised in the future. Through many weeks of prototyping workshops with the tutors about activation and embodiment we had a rough idea of what we would like to create. Looking at the brief of this paper I was really exited as wearable technologies was one of the reasons I came to this degree and was eager to learn about it. As wearable technologies have reached a high peak in these recent years, the future for this subject field is unpredictable as many features still has not been explored.
INEPTUS QUOD FUTURUM, which means ‘fool the future’, or ‘that would be silly’, is the name of this costume. It’s in Latin and this title was interesting because it got us comparing the combining the future aspect as well as the comedy factor of the costume. Our ideas for this project evolved a lot around the 1800’s circus themes. What I found interesting as we were researching about the costumes was that in the past the animals used to be the main reason people would go to circuses. Whereas now many things have changed after many years’ circus communities are slowly replacing the animals with some sort of robotic mechanisms, due to many animals being harmed in the performances. The society would always imagine a women’s body to be in perfect shape as being a model, specially in the circus. As this was our challenge, to make the women feminine at the start but gradually twist the plot and have her project old school videos supporting by an inflated belly. As acrobats in the 1800’s wore a rather tight and appealing outfit, this costume may be most likely to question why and how this costume would fit in the future with heavy technologies that women also sponsored.
The shape of the costume, mainly the sphere was also evolved around the idea of new generation always connecting to technology. Wouldn’t it be remarkable to have such a bubble that floats around you and projects television live, and also physically there in front of you rather than in a screen of a TV or a phone. [1] The projection idea thought came across from researching about a robot Baymax from the movie Big Hero 6. Baymax is a robot constructed by a kid named Hiro. This robot has the ability to save lives, and uses his belly which shows projections as options for the operator.
The inspiration that I personally got was from the people around in the studio, as we give constantly new ideas and feedback to one another which results us in helping ourselves at the last point. As a team member went to one of the exhibitions in Nelson, this also effected us and helped us generate future developments of the ideas that we had planned out. Many times we felt that the ideas that we formed to make out final piece INEPTUS QUOD FUTURUM, were just put together through a random thinking, without planning. Which was one of the surprising aspects of this studio process. I felt that we were all very diverse individuals from each other and this was a strong point as everyone got to portray their input in this final piece, which made us complete the project.
Reference
Walt Disney Animation Studios. (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2016, from http://www.disneyanimation.com/projects/bighero6
Contextual Statement
The digital skins paper this year gave us an opportunity in participating in the World of Wearable Arts competition. We had to create a costume that incorporated aspects of how the circus would be visualised in the future. Through many weeks of prototyping workshops with the tutors about activation and embodiment we had a rough idea of what we would like to create. Looking at the brief of this paper I was really exited as wearable technologies was one of the reasons I came to this degree and was eager to learn about it. As wearable technologies have reached a high peak in these recent years, the future for this subject field is unpredictable as many features still has not been explored.
INEPTUS QUOD FUTURUM, which means ‘fool the future’, or ‘that would be silly’, is the name of this costume. It’s in Latin and this title was interesting because it got us comparing the combining the future aspect as well as the comedy factor of the costume. Our ideas for this project evolved a lot around the 1800’s circus themes. What I found interesting as we were researching about the costumes was that in the past the animals used to be the main reason people would go to circuses. Whereas now many things have changed after many years’ circus communities are slowly replacing the animals with some sort of robotic mechanisms, due to many animals being harmed in the performances. The society would always imagine a women’s body to be in perfect shape as being a model, specially in the circus. As this was our challenge, to make the women feminine at the start but gradually twist the plot and have her project old school videos supporting by an inflated belly. As acrobats in the 1800’s wore a rather tight and appealing outfit, this costume may be most likely to question why and how this costume would fit in the future with heavy technologies that women also sponsored.
The shape of the costume, mainly the sphere was also evolved around the idea of new generation always connecting to technology. Wouldn’t it be remarkable to have such a bubble that floats around you and projects television live, and also physically there in front of you rather than in a screen of a TV or a phone. [1] The projection idea thought came across from researching about a robot Baymax from the movie Big Hero 6. Baymax is a robot constructed by a kid named Hiro. This robot has the ability to save lives, and uses his belly which shows projections as options for the operator.
The inspiration that I personally got was from the people around in the studio, as we give constantly new ideas and feedback to one another which results us in helping ourselves at the last point. As a team member went to one of the exhibitions in Nelson, this also effected us and helped us generate future developments of the ideas that we had planned out. Many times we felt that the ideas that we formed to make out final piece INEPTUS QUOD FUTURUM, were just put together through a random thinking, without planning. Which was one of the surprising aspects of this studio process. I felt that we were all very diverse individuals from each other and this was a strong point as everyone got to portray their input in this final piece, which made us complete the project.
Reference
Walt Disney Animation Studios. (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2016, from http://www.disneyanimation.com/projects/bighero6
Conceptual Statement
The biggest challenge that we had to face in this studio project was making a costume that would look post-human. What would a performer look like in the year 2084? In this studio paper we were given an assignment to make a costume for a circus performer, anything from freaks to clowns to knife throwers were looked at in the process of planning. This semester for the final studio project we formed a group of 3 individuals finally, which consists of Oliver Nugent, Grace Wilfred and myself. The project went through many difficulties and phases, as we ended up testing too many things and not producing the right outcome. After many ideas evolving as the lion tamer transforming into a lion as the final outcome, we came up with a great new and improved idea. The plan was to make a costume that was physically appealing in the modern society, the criteria was for us to make a costume that we would imagine in the year 2084. Which was going to be portrayed by establishing a costume around a young woman who has a blown up belly to represent the comicality of body shape expectations in those years, this was going to be formed by a compressor that would be imbedded with her top around the belly area. Following another idea raised and we decided to have a projection that would be placed inside the blown up belly and would project old cartoons when the belly is big. We decided to add this extra factor to the garment as it would have the technology aspect and would be a reasonable design to enter in the WOW competition.
As the time went past we ended up doing rather many testings of all the components, mainly the blowing up belly area as we had a problem of not figuring out the correct voltage for the compressor in the precise technique while also it being inside someone. The big problem that did come to mind was that there would not be enough air compressed altogether because its hard to find fabric that will hold enough air, and at the same time support the projection. The lack of communication between one another really didn’t help this situation as we did not know to continue evaluating this project or start with a fresh idea as the point. At this point we had set roles for each individual as my role is a designer, my responsibilities were to make a visualisation of the costume that we discussed in a drawing form, and making the jacket, leggings and the frills/ruffs. Gradually coming up with an idea of re-evaluating the costume was our only choice as we couldn’t construct the main compressor piece.
While in the process of re-evaluating the project we came up with an idea that was close enough to the previous one, the idea was to make a huge sphere that would be attached to the model as a whole, this would then project old black & white cartoons. This idea came up through thinking about the current society and their obsession of media, this idea was like a portable TV production for the children in the future for watching cartoon anywhere physically not through a digital screen.
The flaws in the process garment making were countless and getting distracted with different emerging ideas was the biggest bump in the development for the costume, as we kept changing the concept and the design resulting us to have a delay for completing the garment properly on time. Although the prototyping and the testing of the main skeleton was effective, as we tested many ideas constantly we had the idea of what we actually wanted, that would also support the technology part the projection. Another big problem that we faced was that due to too much light being produced through the classroom we couldn’t get the projector showing properly. As this resulted it to produce a dim image and even testing it out with different fabrics, it would still not project properly as the lumens were low. I think that the problem was the lack of resources available and we basically had to work with the materials that were around handy to us as the expected budget would be too high to make it professional.
As my role was making the leggings and ruffs for this costume, I managed to produce them in about 2 weeks as I knew what we were doing now without changing the plan. Making of the leggings was comfortable as well as enjoyable. As with the ruffs I really went impatient and nearly broke my mothers sawing machine, because the fabric is so tough it was impossible to form and sew the plats at the same time. Still managed to finish them though as I learned that hand sewing would work better and still be strong with many layers.
I think as a whole we were successful in creating our artefact. As we did try our best to finish nearly every component that we planned to present. As stated earlier the lack of communication really effected this paper as a whole first from the tutors as they didn’t realise the criteria of the groups were limited for the competition and that effected us losing two individuals. Also from the members as sometimes we all would be confused as to who is doing what? and why were some things not done in time. Given the final five weeks to start our project form scrap and being able to complete the garment was a huge determination, I believe that this group made a substantial effort to finishing this garment, through all the failure we experienced. I would consider doing this paper again as I really enjoyed doing this paper as well as working with my team.
The biggest challenge that we had to face in this studio project was making a costume that would look post-human. What would a performer look like in the year 2084? In this studio paper we were given an assignment to make a costume for a circus performer, anything from freaks to clowns to knife throwers were looked at in the process of planning. This semester for the final studio project we formed a group of 3 individuals finally, which consists of Oliver Nugent, Grace Wilfred and myself. The project went through many difficulties and phases, as we ended up testing too many things and not producing the right outcome. After many ideas evolving as the lion tamer transforming into a lion as the final outcome, we came up with a great new and improved idea. The plan was to make a costume that was physically appealing in the modern society, the criteria was for us to make a costume that we would imagine in the year 2084. Which was going to be portrayed by establishing a costume around a young woman who has a blown up belly to represent the comicality of body shape expectations in those years, this was going to be formed by a compressor that would be imbedded with her top around the belly area. Following another idea raised and we decided to have a projection that would be placed inside the blown up belly and would project old cartoons when the belly is big. We decided to add this extra factor to the garment as it would have the technology aspect and would be a reasonable design to enter in the WOW competition.
As the time went past we ended up doing rather many testings of all the components, mainly the blowing up belly area as we had a problem of not figuring out the correct voltage for the compressor in the precise technique while also it being inside someone. The big problem that did come to mind was that there would not be enough air compressed altogether because its hard to find fabric that will hold enough air, and at the same time support the projection. The lack of communication between one another really didn’t help this situation as we did not know to continue evaluating this project or start with a fresh idea as the point. At this point we had set roles for each individual as my role is a designer, my responsibilities were to make a visualisation of the costume that we discussed in a drawing form, and making the jacket, leggings and the frills/ruffs. Gradually coming up with an idea of re-evaluating the costume was our only choice as we couldn’t construct the main compressor piece.
While in the process of re-evaluating the project we came up with an idea that was close enough to the previous one, the idea was to make a huge sphere that would be attached to the model as a whole, this would then project old black & white cartoons. This idea came up through thinking about the current society and their obsession of media, this idea was like a portable TV production for the children in the future for watching cartoon anywhere physically not through a digital screen.
The flaws in the process garment making were countless and getting distracted with different emerging ideas was the biggest bump in the development for the costume, as we kept changing the concept and the design resulting us to have a delay for completing the garment properly on time. Although the prototyping and the testing of the main skeleton was effective, as we tested many ideas constantly we had the idea of what we actually wanted, that would also support the technology part the projection. Another big problem that we faced was that due to too much light being produced through the classroom we couldn’t get the projector showing properly. As this resulted it to produce a dim image and even testing it out with different fabrics, it would still not project properly as the lumens were low. I think that the problem was the lack of resources available and we basically had to work with the materials that were around handy to us as the expected budget would be too high to make it professional.
As my role was making the leggings and ruffs for this costume, I managed to produce them in about 2 weeks as I knew what we were doing now without changing the plan. Making of the leggings was comfortable as well as enjoyable. As with the ruffs I really went impatient and nearly broke my mothers sawing machine, because the fabric is so tough it was impossible to form and sew the plats at the same time. Still managed to finish them though as I learned that hand sewing would work better and still be strong with many layers.
I think as a whole we were successful in creating our artefact. As we did try our best to finish nearly every component that we planned to present. As stated earlier the lack of communication really effected this paper as a whole first from the tutors as they didn’t realise the criteria of the groups were limited for the competition and that effected us losing two individuals. Also from the members as sometimes we all would be confused as to who is doing what? and why were some things not done in time. Given the final five weeks to start our project form scrap and being able to complete the garment was a huge determination, I believe that this group made a substantial effort to finishing this garment, through all the failure we experienced. I would consider doing this paper again as I really enjoyed doing this paper as well as working with my team.