Experiments in Communication

ZipWear is a series of modular, reconfigurable clothes that comprise of pieces of fabric that can be zipped to each other.

Description
I am breaking down clothing to units of a few different shapes, and creating a system of interchangeable pieces that can be put together to create a variety of different outfits. The goal is to allow for playful experimentation with form, color, and texture of materials.

Personal Statement
A fascination with a comparison between scars and seams led me to this idea. I came across an article about how the term "seamless" is being used a lot in technology, which might be better off bringing more attention to the seams, the points where things are put together, as opposed to trying to hide them. Similarly, I am taking the seams away from clothing, and replacing them with temporary resealable zips (implemented wither with zippers or ziplocs), to give people the freedom to experiment with their clothing and how it's put together.

User Scenario
People will have different pieces, and will experiment with different ways of putting them together, to create a different garment each time. When they don't feel like wearing the pieces as a skirt anymore, they can turn them into a shirt, or even just an accessory (e.g. handbag). People might also trade pieces with their friends.

Posted by kyveli at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The presentation I gave to class on ZipWear can be found here.

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Keywords:
modular clothes, transformation of the clothing, creativity of the wearer, playfulness, interactivity, experimentation with forms and textiles.

Inspirations:
-Anne Galloway's talk on Scars and Seams

-Galya Rosenfeld, Object Un Dress

-Fascination with form of fabric and clothing

Vivienne Westwood

-Lego

Aspirations:
People will have different pieces, and will experiment with different ways of putting them together, to create a different garment each time. When they don't feel like wearing the pieces as a skirt anymore, they can turn them into a shirt, or even just an accessory (e.g. handbag). People might also trade pieces with their friends.

Concerns:
I thought I wanted to have the zippers blend in with the color of the fabric, but after seeing this photo I think it might be interesting to have the zippers stand out more, like piping. This makes more sense to me because it's really what the project is about, so why try to hide it?

I am considering also using snaps as a platform to allow the wearer to slightly modify the shape of each piece, to achieve a better fit.

Similar projects (not directly related)

-Pell Overton - Walldrobe/Wearpaper
Flat pieces of leather, pre-cut with a laser-cutter and outfitted with snaps so that they can snap to eachother and take form as clothes, or snap onto the wall and become part of the wallpaper.
(under research: Walldrobe/Wearpaper)

-Issey Miyake, A-POC

-Final Home

-Sandra Garatt Modular Collection
modular clothes, but not really in the same sense that I am thinking about.

-Galya Rosenfeld, Modular Clothing

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I don't remember why, but I was thinking about pleats. A part of the Greek national costume, the "foustanela", is a skirt that consists of 400 pleats, one for each year that Greece was under Turkish occupation. This is an interesting example of clothing being used to "reveal"/bear evidence of a negative part of Greek history, like a scar that externalizes and reminds the wearer of bad times that have passed.

I wonder if there are other such symbolisms in national costumes (I'm sure there must be something, but I am wondering what, and if there are other cases in which there is representation of an event, something with a temporal quality).

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I am interested in the stories/narratives behind scars.
I am interested in the emotional connection/reaction people have towards their scars.

I am interested in how these can be translated into wearables terms (zippers, seams).
What would make your clothes special enough that you had to relay a story about them to people?

What if clothes had more than just a surface layer?
I don't yet know what the purpose of having such clothes would be. I guess I started thinking of the concept clothes as independent entities, with their own moods, with depth, personality. I think of this as a spin of the idea of clothes as "second skin". If clothes have scars (zippers, seams), shouldn't they also have something underneath?

I guess I have to think about what kind of purpose or functionality such an "organic/living" clothing might have, and if this is the kind of approach I want to take.

Posted by kyveli at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Though I haven't decided yet how literal the reference to scars in my project will be, I did some research on the topic. Here's what I found:

anthropological study of scars:
source: http://illuminations.berkeley.edu/archives/2004/article.php?volume=2&story=1
"I'm most interested in the stories we create around scars, how someone like a doctor looks at scars as opposed to the way someone who lives with very visible scarring would," says Case. "There is a very human need to make narratives around scars."
[...]
"Her friend showed a kind of revulsion, as if looking at the scar could remind her that it could happen to her, too,' Case says. "Finally, the cancer survivor made her friend look at the scar. She said: 'Look at this! It means that I survived!'"
___________________________________

I did a Flickr search for "scar", and found many photos of scars.
after looking at the photos, and reading their descriptions, I have come to the following conclusions:

people feel need to "point out", document, call some attention to their scars, even if it's not pleasant to them ("This is a very hard photo to take of my right arm. This is an old football scar.")

people have a somewhat unrealistic perception of their scars. most of the pictures of scars on flickr, the scar was very hard to discern (maybe it was just the photo quality / zoom level, but still)

scars are important to their bearers. they like to tell the story behind the scar, even if it was a trivial event/accident that happened years and years ago.

Positive views of scars:
"Not the scars of life, but the scar of life, the scar that gave a life back... This is where the surgeon entered my dad's head and removed and moved blood vessels that were pressing on his nerves."

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I came across the notes of an anthropologist's presentation from a wearables conference, and she was talking about seams and scars, and how they demarcate a site where two pieces have been separated and/or put together. They indicate something that has happened in the past and that could happen again in the future.
(I'll let someone better versed summarize the talk:
"Anne Galloway's concise ideas on Seams and Scars. For her, these are signs of being liminal and hybrid, traces of actions, of either making or becoming. Whereas the Ubicomp is looking for a "seamless" experience, wouldn't it be sometimes more interesting to exploit the glitches and use them as a critical tool? This becomes especially important when talking about flesh and machine, since this increasingly possible construct - even though very much a product of western thinking - will bring up a lot of questions in relation to material culture." (from wmmna))

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