Dialog Light Virtual Cloth and Digital Textile

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1 Dialog Light Virtual Cloth and Digital Textile

2 Dialog Light Virtual Cloth and Digital Textile Keywords: light, virtual/real, physical/digital, textiles and surfaces, human and architectural body, digital technology, visual illusion The following observations focus on the growing role of light and digital images within textiles, clothing, and the built environment, where light is used like a virtual cloth wrapping around either the human or the architectural body, covering its skin with exuberant patterns and colors. The discussion refers to recent examples in fashion and architecture, explaining the effect generated through the employment of light in combination with material and texture influencing shape and character of surfaces, garments, and buildings. Particularly in architecture, as a direct result of technological developments, a new approach towards the appearance of a building and its skin emerged. It seems that architecture adopted attributes from fashion and textiles by addressing an audience s emotions through visual and tactile experiences as well as taking on playfulness, softness, and fastchanging look. In this respect, methods and techniques have been applied such as printing, weaving, pleating, and draping to achieve softer, more fluid, and complex forms out of hard materials blurring distinctions within the building and towards the surroundings. Combined with sophisticated lighting schemes and digital technology, today s facades resemble the vivid texture and movement of a woven or printed cloth aiming to visually dissolve and dematerialize the building. At the same time, fashion designers have begun to challenge the limits of clothing and the human body by applying techniques, materials, and new technologies such as digital media and lighting, which have been initially explored and used in architecture a fascinating connection keenly debated in recent publications and highlighted by exhibitions such as Skin + Bones (2008). It is the light s elusive character and fleeting quality that is particularly intriguing. Being Anke Jakob Anke Jakob is an artist, designer, and researcher based in London, working with printed surfaces/ textiles and digital media. She is a post-doctoral researcher at Kingston University, London, and partner at architecture and design practice leit-werk ltd. Anke has a PhD in design (Bath Spa University, UK), an MA in textile design (Central St Martins College of Art & Design, London), and studied digital graphics and animation at the Academy for Media & Arts, Cologne, Germany. Textile, Volume 6, Issue 3, pp DOI: / X Reprints available directly from the Publishers. Photocopying permitted by licence only Berg. Printed in the United Kingdom.

3 256 Anke Jakob immersed in the play of light can create feelings of pleasure a pleasure gained from observing oneself and the surroundings becoming harmlessly and momentarily transformed. If these experiences come unexpectedly and surprisingly, they can be at their most beguiling. Visible now and gone in a second, leaving no trace, they seem to belong to another world. When light is falling through the branches of a tree, patterns are produced on the surfaces beneath and, temporarily, the place is perceived differently. These shadow patterns are like ephemeral imprints on the skin of objects, bodies, and buildings. Images composed by light such as shadows, projections or reflections although they are a physical fact are of an illusory existence. Nothing seems more virtual than such imagery, nevertheless it can appear amazingly real deceiving our eye. Such is the case when applying projections onto the naked human body. From a distance the deception is almost perfect as the projected images appear like close-fitting garments. In fact, the person standing in the light of the projection becomes dressed in virtual clothes (Figure 1). Only body movements or moving the projected image lifts this visual illusion. Thereby it is extremely captivating to observe the fusion of skin and projection and their influence on each other. On the one hand, the projected image or pattern alters the appearance of the human body, dissolving or enhancing its shape. On the other hand, the curves of the body distort and disrupt the projection. The relationship between body and projection has been explored widely in arts. Because the method of projecting is as effective as it is simple and technical means have become increasingly available, today it finds extensive application especially in performances and on stage. In this context, performers interact with the light and the projection by moving in and out of it playing with the different worlds. It is the fleetingness and flexibility, which seems particularly interesting and advantageous. One moment, body and skin are drenched with patterns of light as if covered by a vividly decorated cloth. The next moment, this cloth changes or vanishes altogether. However, in everyday life such virtual cloth meaning cloth made entirely out of light/ projections proves to be rather problematic of course. Not only is it more or less ineffective in covering and protecting the body, the realization of it in a wearable form is also tricky with current technology no one obviously wants to carry a bulky projector around. Projections therefore seem to be limited and bound to certain occasions, locations and conditions within interior and exterior environments and spaces, where they can be used for instance for decorative purpose and rather act as a surprise encounter as might happen in nature when walking beneath trees and the shadow patterns float over body and skin. With the development of digital technology and lighting techniques, other ways of displaying images of light besides projection have become possible. Forward-thinking designers

4 Light Virtual Cloth and Digital Textile 257 Figure 1 Anke Jakob Alienated Body. Anke Jakob. have begun to experiment with such technology for clothing and fashion, as for example Hussein Chalayan in his collaborative work with interaction designer Moritz Waldemeyer. Chalayan s Fall/Winter mainline featured a video-playing dress, whilst the Spring/Summer 2008 main collection included garments with incorporated multiple laser lights. The video dress, made of 15,600 light-emitting diode (LED) lights and glass crystals from Swarovski, displayed landscape images reflecting the seasonal changes. Chalayan says the dress created a micro-geography, so that the bodies themselves became the seasons (West 2007: 59). The glass crystals played a significant role in combination with the laser lights, which made the crystals sparkle in a way never seen before in a dress (Waldemeyer in Chalayan 2007). The light was extremely scattered by the multifaceted crystals and the garment was glowing from within. When the lasers were shooting away from the glass they created a ray around the body, and the light itself became the dress, Chalayan states. For the fashion designer these garments are monumental pieces, monuments of ideas (Chalayan 2007), which evolved from the concept of the collection and were not produced for sale. Although they were prototypes only, the statements made are thought-provoking and inspirational, and give a glimpse of how light might be integrated in future clothing. Fashion design team Viktor & Rolf took the notion of the virtual, the digital cloth to another level by creating textiles and garments

5 258 Anke Jakob only existing or becoming complete within the virtual realm of the digital screen. Their collection for Fall/Winter featured fabrics of an intense shade of cerulean blue that functioned as a bluescreen when presented at the fashion show. (Bluescreen is a method of filming that includes monochromatic sections or background for the purpose of exchanging these parts with different imagery for the final outcome.) Screens flanking the catwalk displayed the models wearing these garments, but here the blue parts were digitally replaced with moving images such as swimming fishes, cities, landscapes, etc. As a result, fabric and garment appeared animated and alive. An overlap of realities, a fusion of the tangible real and the elusive virtual was achieved. Beyond fashion and textiles, in building and interior design the concept of light as virtual cloth has advanced much further. Since the beginning of this century, digital media technology, in combination with revolutionizing lighting techniques such as LEDs, has been embraced by architecture on a remarkable scale. This development coincides with a rising tendency towards favoring the decorative in the environment and emphasizing the seductive element in architecture. In this respect, material has gained great importance too. Through the use of both technology and material, physical boundaries of spaces become softened or even disintegrated, and architectural surfaces inside and outside become ambiguous, temporal, mutable, and hybrid. This development is especially evident in the design of facades, where the light, employed in conjunction with digital display technology, acts again like a cloth on the building s skin a virtual wrap around the architectural body and its physical surface. An example is BIX, the animated electronic facade enclosing the building of the Kunsthaus in Graz, Austria. Circular fluorescent tubes are placed behind a translucent acrylic membrane, which function as pixels forming a low-resolution, gray-scale screen. The displayed content comprising images, text or short movies, recognizable from a distance, becomes a totally abstract pattern at close range. The light matrix significantly affects the appearance of the building, blurring and softening its edges. The light determines the architectural form of the building particularly at night, as the only shapes that can be seen are the digital images glowing from inside the actual, tangible skin disappears in the darkness merging with the sky (Bullivant 2005: 83 5). Different technical translations of the concept result in varying visual expressions, thereby the combination of light with material is crucial. For example, at the Galleria department store in South Korea (redeveloped by Dutch architects UNstudio and Arup Lighting, UK) the entire facade was transformed into a single digital video screen made of thousands of glass discs with LED lights placed behind them. The glass is backed with dichroic-filter film, which diffuses the light of the LEDs into a homogenous glow resulting in a rather blurred display of images and movies, enhancing

Light Virtual Cloth and Digital Textile 259 Figure 2 Facade design at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London employing an LED lighting scheme. Parts (a) and (b) 2007 8 PennWell Corporation.

6 Light Virtual Cloth and Digital Textile 259 Figure 2 Facade design at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London employing an LED lighting scheme. Parts (a) and (b) PennWell Corporation. Parts (c) and (d) Anke Jakob, the decorative effect of the facade. Furthermore the material gives the building an iridescent shimmer during daylight like a cloak of spangles, perfect for both day and evening wear (Nolan 2005: 154). Consequently, the facade is in constant transformation changing its color, visibility and its relationship to sky and surroundings. A unique LED-based lighting scheme was developed for the facade of the new building at the Moorfields Eye Hospital complex in London, designed and programmed by Lightscape Projects for architects Penoyre & Prasad (Whitaker 2008). The scheme includes a three-dimensional, yet elusive surface texture that is generated by countless, freely placed, folded aluminum louvers installed for sun protection. The LEDs illuminate the front of the building by casting light on the underneath of these louvers, giving the facade a dynamic and ambiguous appearance, resembling a cloth floating around a body (Figure 2). There are many more examples of techniques and methods employing light in a variety of fields as the main design element, such as the application of optical fibers within textiles, or the potential use of Organic Light-Emitting Displays (OLEDs), or the sophisticated utilization of light and projections within interior spaces. There are increasingly more textile artists and designers who have begun to include light in their work and research. Examples are Rachel Wingfield, who is part of the London-based design research studio loop.ph, and Jennifer Shellard. Shellard employs lightresponsive material in her weaving and combines it with UV light to activate certain parts of the cloth, whereas Wingfield works with printed electroluminescent technology on surfaces for inside and outside spaces. Light has become an extremely important design tool not only because of its huge potential for creating visual experiences, but also in respect to aesthetic and emotional sustainability due to its inherent temporality and changeability. With the development of new materials and technologies (including lightresponsive products, lighting techniques, and digital media), it seems the possibilities to creatively explore the interaction between surface and light are endless. Light evolves more and more as an integral element of surfaces and textiles, of skin and cloth. And we can look forward to the methods, designs, and applications that will emerge in future. References Bullivant, Lucie BIX Matrix. Architectural Design January/ February: Chalayan, Hussein Hussein Chalayan The Making of SS/08.

7 260 Anke Jakob fashion/spring-summer-08/ paris/hussein-chalayan-making/, accessed May 1, Nolan, Billy Dichroic Filter with LEDs. Frame January/ February: Skin + Bones Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture, exhibition guidebook. London and Los Angeles, CA: Somerset House/The Museum of Contemporary Art. West, Daniel ICON architecture+design May: 59. Whitaker, Tim Hospital LED lighting scheme is easy on the eye. features/4/7/5, accessed May 1, Websites accessed May 1, accessed May 1, accessed May 1, accessed May 1, accessed May 1, 2008.

Art Glass Installations by Tim de Jong Company Profile & Portfolio Ranch Road 12, San Marcos, Texas wgw.com

Art Glass Installations by Tim de Jong Company Profile & Portfolio 6469 Ranch Road 12, San Marcos, Texas 78666 512-213-0923 wgw.com design@wgw.com WIMBERLEY GLASSWORKS What We Do Wimberley Glassworks creates