Intra-Acting Body and Textile Expressions Becoming with Digital Movement Translation
Research Publication
2023
Design Project
Guided by agential realism as the chosen philosophical framework, alternative ontological and hierarchical relations between the body and textiles were explored by digitally translating their movement.
A textile-robot installation was developed, expanding the capabilities of the textile to sense its movement via inertia-based motion capture sensors and initiate movement via the robotic arms it was attached to. A dancer was invited to engage in a performative dialogue with the textile-robot installation, revealing dynamically unfolding material intra-actions of the human body, textiles, and robotic arms depending on the placement of motion capturing sensors.
The performance suggested that the installation served as the apparatus to diffractively renegotiate the physical-material boundaries of the body and textile through movement translation. Movement data functioned as a dynamic and entangled material, expanding movement-based expressions from one agent to another. Body-textile hybrids emerged from this process, and shaped each other in a mutual act of becoming, challenging ontological structures of the body and textiles commonly applied in fashion design whereby the body and textile are considered separate agents of which the former animates the latter.
This project was realized as part of an artistic research residency at the departments of Fashion and Technology and Creative Robotics of the Art University Linz. It received funding from FAR – Fashion and Robotics under grant number AR 611 (https://fashionrobotics.at).
Authors: Jan Tepe, Emanuel Gollob, Julio Andres Escudero, Amir Bastan
Dancer: Mischa Hall
