choreographic design: a choreological turn in the construction of fashion objects.
Laban’s Choreutics (1966) proposes a geometrical shape, the icosahedron, as the visual representation of the volume of personal space (kinesphere). This intimate space is where all actions occur and represent the outer limit that connects the body with the rest of the world. We inhabit this space and move through life with it. In other words, we wear our space and relate with others through it.
In this choreographic approach, I define the surface of my kinesphere, the outer surface of my personal space, as the stage where the trace-forms of my path on earth are imprinted, changing it, distressing it. By unfolding the geometric shape, I discover the pattern of the space I inhabit.
The resultant surface is 660 centimetres long and 318 centimetres wide, revealing the extension of the space I inhabit. All possible ranges of motion that my body has fit into this unfolded volume.
The visualisation of my kinesphere, altered by traces of my life, informs the discipline of fashion not only as an aesthetic outcome but as an essential object to position in perspective how much space a body needs to move freely. With this image in mind, I perceived the limitations of standardised pattern-making and the possible outcomes that could be obtained by working with the body’s movement range instead of a static mannequin. It also refers to the tridimensionality of the space that the body occupies. This, together with the body itself, could induce new visions of future body objects and the possibilities that fashion has as a medium to establish questions and propose answers to the relation between body and space.
The multilayered fabrics were cut with a KUKA Robot, as part of the research project "Fashion and Robotics".
FAR – Fashion and Robotics is funded by the FWF PEEK Programme for Arts-based Research (Project No.: AR 611) and realised by the University of Art and Design Linz in cooperation with the Johannes Kepler University Linz.
credits
photography:
@eon.noir
model:
Yu-Teng Huang
video:
julio escudero