Twenty First Century Bodies and Electric Textiles

I thought after the discussion we had two weeks ago about prosthetics, there couldn't be a cooler subject to talk about, until this week. Sorry if this post is a bit long, but I really enjoyed the reading and have some things I want to say. Fashion that pushes the boundaries of what is considered wearable is so close to my heart, I found the readings this week from Bradley Quinn's Techno Fashion, absolutely amazing, which is now definitely on my "to buy," list.

Quinn's dissection of avant guard fashion designers who approach fashion from different perspectives was very informative and very interesting. I know the work of artists like Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan but I didn't know all of the concepts behind it, which I definitely should since I reference their work so much, so this was very helpful. The work I was not as familiar with was the work of Tristian Webber, who creates garmets "with the forensic scrutiny of a medical autopsy. " What Quinn means by this is that he literally cuts fabric that is informed by muscle groups and skeletal scructures. Red coloring references the inside of the body and is cut in a way that actually looks like muscles.

This image is from a show, Fashion in Motion, that McQueen did at the Victoria and Albert Museum which you can see in its entirety here



















Webber's work rests on a line between beauty and grotesque, but his purpose is to address "the flaws and inefficiencies of the flesh underneath, correcting them through seems and stitching." Webber understands that modern fashion made in our western world is because of the way we are accepted through sexualized beauty, and his work addresses the inside as well as the outside. Technology informs Webber's work. It used to be that women's most effective device for body modification was the corset, yet these days there are so many options between surgical enhancement and excessive exercise that the untouched body is a thing of beauty. I enjoy Webber investigation into the inside of the body, because why not? It seems like a logical next step that hasn't happened yet. What if we could start altering the insides of our bodies and being able to be aware of that somehow when we see people. I think notions of making the private public parallel decisions that are made about dress, therefore his logic is well within the capacity of what fashion discusses.

Oh Alexander McQueen, you are so much cooler to me now. I have always been stricken by your garments but to know now why you do what you do, I relate to you so much more.



















Quinn explains how McQueen saw his sister abused by a man when he was young and ever since has created objects that are aggressive for women. He adds that the women wearing this objects must be strong in order to withstand their razor sharpness or body modifying extensions and could even elevate the women wearing his work to super hero status. McQueen uses beauty as a tool to create violence, although the women wearing his objects appear dangerous, they are still quite beautiful. McQueen also works closely with jeweler, Shaun Leane, who has been working with McQueen for 9 years, fashioning obtrusive adornment to further assert the danger involved with McQueen's beauties.

This image is another from the Fashion in Motion show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the rest of the photos can be seen here




















These two chapters really focused on how technology has impacted the fashion world. Quinn said it perfectly when he said that fashion used to be about what could be made with the technology available, but now technology is being created to suit the needs of fashion. No designer addresses this more head on than Hussein Chalayan, who creates fashion that addresses how the body moves within environmental systems. His fashions have a life of their own. The garments are activated by the wearer, but the wearer is only necessary to hold their form. These garments push the limits of what clothing is understood to do, they start to have a mind of their own!

Check out this video. Watch all of it if you have 4 minutes, but if you don't skip to about 1 minute 40 seconds..that is when the amazingness that is Hussein Chalayan happens.




I also really enjoyed the discussions of designers that are working with textiles in an interesting way - like Daniel Herman, who cuts fabric which looks like lace to leave a layered lace suntan on its wearer, Kei Kagami, who also brings the private to public by making garments partially or completely from glass, so the viewer is invited inside the garment, and Elisabeth de Senneville who makes garments from microcapsules that can be filled with dyes, drugs or cosmetic substances, depending on what the situation calls for. Artists like these may seem strange and weird to some, but I feel like the questions that they are asking address larger issues and are leading technology in directions that only they know to go.

New Design for Final Project

I have thought about my Final Project Design, and after our work day last Thursday, I think I understand how this microprocessor is going to work with my creations. I have an ongoing body of work I would like this piece to complement so I am leaning in that direction.

That being said, I initially wanted this piece to work with two people. I like the idea of the reciprocal, but I'm not too sure that I can pull it off with this piece anymore, because the viewer (the audience) is the reciprocal, so trying to squeeze a third in their seems unecessary at this point, although I would like to try that again later, maybe it will work with the next piece.

Here are some drawings I did of what I was considering when I was thinking of working in pair with a boy..reciprocal..





























I am still really interested in this idea of using the body as subject. Most recently I have been doing research about why certain parts of the body are considered beautiful to us. At the beginning of the semester, I was most interested in the bust area, which I think is a natural place to begin since our culture places so much attention towards it. Now, I have moved to the hips. The hips have a much more significant sexualized value because that is much closer to the place where intercourse actually happens as well as it not being available to us as much as breasts are.

The hips have been exaggerated quite violently in our past, and I would like to narrow in on a specific type of body extension, the pannier, which is in the same family as the bustle, however located on the sides of the body instead of the backside.






































At times, these body modifications reached quite extensive lengths, fully flattening the wearer, as well as making it almost impossible for these women to move without the help of assistants, a true symbol of wealth and class.

Understanding that part of our taste in beauty is this evolutionary residue of our natural instincts telling us who would be suitable for mating, which perhaps, these widening hip extensions somehow inform us.



















I would like to use that instinct at a lure to pull the viewer in, creating a belt-like attachment that resembles the pannier, but is constructed of my little eye opening and shutting devices, which should also pull the viewer in, then return gaze and threaten them with the evil eye.

Performers and Stage as Architecture, Oskar Schlemmer

In the two readings we reviewed for class this week, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present – (Chapter 5) Bauhaus and The Theater of the Bauhaus, the stage itself and the role of the performers on stage are discussed. The Bauhaus was a school in Germany that began in the early 1920s, their goal was to investigate every type of creative process there is and have students doing their research all at the same time in the same place, interacting with each other, mixing and finding solutions together. Oskar Schlemmer took lead of the school and brought with him performance. The performances his students worked on were very experimental, even by today’s standards. Actors wearing garments only made of stripes or costumes which gave actors geometric shapes, took position on stage to look like a three dimensional painting. Lights and sounds were also experimented with along with geometrically breaking down the stage and creating movement based on these dissections. The second reading really breaks down the construction of buildings and how these were considered in performances, understanding that there were 3 basic types of staging. I enjoyed looking at performance in this way, and I believe that in creating performances that look at the stage so closely, the stage becomes part of the props that a performer has at their fingertips to utilize in performance. Not only does the stage become part of the performer’s props, but the performer becomes part of the stage’s architecture. For example, when Schlemmer broke the stage down into geometric sections and the performers moved within these limitations, the spider web-like residue of their movement gets woven into the architectural design of the stage.

Pinder Workshop

Last Friday I spent the day with Jefferson Pinder, a Washington DC based performance and film artist, as well as about 10 other students for a performance workshop at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee’s Innova Art Gallery. Pinder was invited to be an artist in residence and part of his residency was to offer this workshop. I really enjoyed the day! We started with introductions and swiftly moved into seeing some of Pinder’s first performance work. Procession was one of Pinder’s first performance pieces, in which he moved a 300 pound telephone pole 6 miles through downtown Washington, DC.















The imagery was especially significant to me, and reminded me of home. Along the way in his journey, he made 12 stops, in locations that he thought the pole could have existed. He was offered assistance from passerbys during his journey, and the whole time he was clad with a suit that referenced his grandfather, who always wore a suit, even to the dinner table.

After seeing his work and our introductions, Pinder took the rest of the morning showing up a seminal work by Jorgen Leth called, the Perfect Human. Leth is a Danish Film Director who is considered to be a leader in experimental film, who is well know for his series of films from 1967, called The Perfect Human.




What we viewed was a documentary of a project realized by Lars Von Trier, called “5 Obstructions.” In the documentary, Von Trier challenges Leth to recreate The Perfect Human, in a series of 5 films, but each time with a set of obstructions that challenge the way in which he creates the film. We watched the first two in class, which Pinder claimed were the best. I haven’t watched the rest yet, but I am eager to, since apparently, the relationship is not the same in the end because of the extreme challenges that Von Trier set for Leth.







I think Pinder’s purpose in showing us these films was to understand the rawness and beauty in working with restrictions. We were then requested to create a 5-10 minute film (based on a you tube video we selected during introductions) that also took a risk. Mine, was the risk of time, we had about 30 minutes to create two 5-10 minute films, so we certainly didn’t have time to think about it. I didn’t get to see the finished films since we ran over a little, but I hear I might have access to them soon. If I get them, I will certainly post.

Sensory Prostheses

The subject of sensory prostheses is addressed in Lisa Cartwright and Brian Goldfarb’s On the Subject of Neural and Sensory Protheses and is compared against Stelarc’s interest in the parasite as protheses in Julie Clarke’s A Sensorial Act of Republication.
First I have to say both of these articles were super interesting to me, as prosthetics are one of the biggest areas of research in my work.

Cartwright and Goldfarb address protheses by addressing the different ways in which protheses have developed. I am interested in the approach to understanding protheses through the nervous system or myoelectrics. Myoelectric protheses are extensions that tap into the remanant limb’s nervous system, creating a new body object in the place of what was lost. As well as the actual limb itself, the sensation of touch, commonly linked to emotions, sensual pleasure and language are also partially lost when a hand and the nerve rich skin that surrounds it is lost. The myoelectric protheses offers an abstract new language, through heat and vibrations and pressure, that must be reinterpreted by its wearer.













Myoelectric Protheses






Stelarc is an Australian based performance artist who incorporates themes of cyborgization and other human-machine interfaces in his work. Stelarc expands his “nervous system” to include the virtual environment of the internet and our mediated culture as well as the Avatar world to be considered as a new type of nervous system. Stelarc’s interest is in “technology [that] extends the body into the virtual realm of illusion and the Avatar moves Stelarc’s body through the motion prosthesis…(198)”













Stelarc





The research into the importance of prosthetics illustrates the potency of the power of touch in communication as we understand it. Stelarc’s decision to exploit this in our newly understood virtual world should be recognized. As a culture we are moving farther away from person to person contact in communication, which I recognize as precious. The power of understanding the techonology behind prosthetics, brings forward sensations that seem to be more and more overlooked in our modern forms of communication. These senses are precious and care should be observed to take full advantage because someday we may no longer have the privilege.