Over the past two decades digital technology has advanced from a confined and peripheral tool into an integrated and mainstream component of the way fashion is produced, distributed and analysed. While this increasing engagement has affected the way fashion works practically, it has also given rise to new ideas about how the physical world might be understood and represented.
Out of this emerges a body of work which raises questions about the current potential, limitations and desirability of integrating digital phenomena into the fabric of the material world. This work reveals the strange and uneven process of translation across material and virtual platforms - or between analogue and digital techniques - in which information is potentially lost, gained or distorted.
Digital Disturbances presents both recent works and new commissions by seven designers and creative teams whose work documents these interactions and effects, both in the design and representation of fashion.
POSTmatter will showcase Ripple (2014), an interactive film installation which simulates the virtual experience of touch. Visitors are invited to run their hands across a motion sensor fabric control panel, causing digital ripples to reveal layers of materials and images on screen. Echo (2011), a film by Bart Hess, explores ongoing material research into the creation of shape through repetition - physical materials and the human body mutate into sculptural timelapses. A selection of garments from Anrealage’s Autumn/Winter 2010 wideshortslimlong collection will show the results of using computer design software to manipulate objects - presenting the viewer with four dramatically different silhouettes. Shirts from Simone C. Niquille’s REALFACE Glamouflage (2013) collection raise questions about the impact of facial recognition technology and surveillance on personal privacy. They employ dazzle, a camouflage which uses optic illusions to conceal through confusion. Patterns on the shirts incorporate pirated faces and celebrity impersonators in multiples, providing an additional layer of ‘identity’ which enables wearers to evade verification.
