Plastic Paradigms

A Time for Textiles to Go Digital

2011-09-26T18:36:00.001+01:00

Eley Kishimoto, Attic Fantastic, Autumn/Winter 2011-2012 from sleek magazine on Vimeo.

The New Futurism

2011-09-01T11:03:00.002+01:00

Holly Fulton SS2010.

Her first collection as an MA graduate at the Royal College of Art in 2009.

Animated Cross Stitch and Straight Stitch

2011-08-22T18:06:00.002+01:00

Animated Textile Design from Beep Show on Vimeo.

Trainers and mobile phones: the objects of our disaffection

2011-08-16T16:37:00.005+01:00

Justin McGuirk guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 August 2011 13.48 BST

Trainers and mobile phones: the objects of our disaffection

The recent riots were a venting of consumer spleen – with sports shoes and mobiles the primary targets. But looters made the mistake of confusing wealth with status symbols

In 1968 Guy Debord defined the "spectacle" – his term for all the trappings of a consumer society – as "the moment when the commodity has reached the total occupation of social life". And that's what happened during last week's riots. Shopping is no longer just the chief preoccupation of our leisure time – it is also how we go about our civil unrest. In that sense, the riots have rightly been described as a means of participation in a consumer society that the looters are otherwise excluded from. These were acquisitive riots. Lacking any articulated aims or ideology, they manifested themselves as a venting of consumer spleen. And two objects were the primary targets of that urge: trainers and mobile phones.

Three brands kept coming up in the coverage of the riots: JD Sports and Footlocker – the two most targeted footwear shops – and BlackBerry, the smart phone the rioters were using to message each other. What do trainers and smart phones have in common? Rather a lot, not least as they are both tools that the rioters used to outmanoeuvre the police. One provided speed, so that when the police did actually give chase they were no match for their more nimble adversaries. The other, BlackBerry Messenger, provided access to the networked society that made the rioters too dynamic and mobile for anything as static and cumbersome as a police cordon to handle. These were certainly not conscious motives for stealing phones and trainers, just useful advantages of high-performance commodities.

The real motive was desire. Trainers and mobile phones are two of the most prized status symbols among the young and streetwise. And both products draw their lustre from a culture of extreme wealth. The irony of the rioters' use of BlackBerry smart phones was that these were once the ultimate executive toy, synonymous with jetset bankers keeping tabs on share prices – tools for executing a different kind of greedy impulse. Well, I say "irony", but perhaps it's not ironic at all. Bankers are role models of a sort, whether we like it or not; they represent a kind of wealth and unregulated freedom that the urban poor can only dream of. Politicians often refer to the "trickle-down effect" as the reason not to enforce higher taxation on the rich, but there is no sign of that trickle-down effect in real terms. What trickles down are the status symbols, not the liquidity.

The same is true of trainers. Brands employ sports stars with basic salaries of £250,000 a week to sell everything from tennis shoes to aftershave balm. Some of the allure of streetwear apparel – some of its glamour as a commodity – comes from its intimate proximity to extreme wealth. The fetish character of the trainer lies in its ability to embody so much more than a bundle of rubber and synthetic leather machine-stitched in a Vietnamese sweatshop.

Trainers as streetwear have a rather different provenance in the UK than in the US. Before hip-hop or skater culture made it to these shores, we had the casual subculture. Originally the preserve of football hooligans, "casual" style was born on the terraces in the late 1970s, and involved wearing Adidas or Gola trainers with designer-label clothing – preferable to football strips partly because it made it harder for the police to identify brawlers. By the mid-80s, this dress code was mainstream. And while many of those vintage trainer styles are still in fashion, trainer culture has morphed into something exponentially more sophisticated.

The trainer deploys the shape-shifting logic of the commodity at its most manipulative. Particularly in the last decade, brands have accelerated their novelty cycles with the promise of advanced performance. The visual language of the sports shoe has acquired the baroque manifestations of technological research. Trainers have developed an architecture of ribs and buttresses, air cushions and webbing. The marketing bumf blinds you with a pseudo-science of shock absorption. The logic is ineluctable: it leads to the nirvana of perfect support.

And just when you've completely bought into that logic, Nike will sideswipe you with a new concept: the Nike Free. This is the trainer that removes all that support malarkey to bring you the "Barefoot Running Shoe". No more architecture, just the pleasant sensation of running on your naked soles. Well, hang on: which is it Nike? Bareback or support? There is no right answer. There is only what will sell, only what you can make people want. That is the genius of the commodity.

Unfortunately for them, in targeting their favourite products, the rioters played right into the politicians' hands. Because the commodity makes criminality tangible. If the looters had been raiding stock options or ministerial expense accounts, they might have got away with it. But pilfering trainers – real things – is obviously "pure criminality". The mistake they made was to confuse wealth with the symbols of that wealth – a confusion of comfort with design.

In his essay on the 1965 Watts riots, Debord argued that the rioters in this black community in LA were in effect morally superior to the whites who recoiled at their behaviour. Yes, they looted TVs but, Debord argued, they were also demanding more than the whites, something they couldn't buy or steal: civil rights. "Comfort can never be comfortable enough for those who seek what is not on the market," he wrote. In Tottenham, Hackney, Peckham, Brixton, Birmingham and Manchester, the rioters went after what was already on the market. In settling for the commodity, they let the system off lightly by falling for its decoy.

FEEDBACK

Amadeus37

16 August 2011 2:28PM

I do not think that setting fire to a furniture store when there might have been people in it is anything to do with greed.
What followed on was opportunism and looking at MPs and bankers the young have been "taught by masters" - to quote Henry James in Washington Square.

Justthefactsman

16 August 2011 2:49PM

Justin's analysis does give some answers, but not all of them.
The riots are a manifestation of many of the social problems that exist in not only with the U.K but in other industrialised societies.
I think that you scribblers and readers should read "The Theory of The Leisure Class" by Thorstein Veblein.
Conspicuous consumption is not new, neither is the desire to consume conspicuously.
The situation as it exists today is the proles are exorted to consume conspicuously but they have not the means (dosh) to do so.
Thwarted desires when built up to a certain point without the hope of any satisfaction will ultimately result in violence.
Commodity capitalsim as it exists today has created for itself an unsolvable problem.
How to sell the commodities that it produces to those who really do not have the means to buy them.
The answer is seems is to create desire via advertising and then get the proles to mortgage their feir future via credit purchasing.
Now we have arrived at the situation where credit is not available and desire is still being created.
An explosive situation indeed.
Maybe we will see in the near future cries of "aux tumbrils", or "debout les dmnes de la terre".

finnhooligan

16 August 2011 3:17PM

Chalk one up for those highly skilled marketing geniuses that help define our lives for us. Although, in this case perhaps their ads were a little too effective. Gives new meaning to the term must-have item.

sojtruth

16 August 2011 3:18PM

I think that you scribblers and readers should read "The Theory of The Leisure Class" by Thorstein Veblein. @Justthefactsman

Veblen was indeed prophetic, he was a perceptive observer of societal change. But what is equally as important is the degree to which politics has been commodified. Political advertisements for all sorts of things saturate the airwaves and virtual networks. Here in the States Roger Ailes and Fox News (excellent Guardian piece btw) mastered the 24-7 cable cycle by recognizing that political coverage was now entertainment. And Fox has been expanding their factory of pundits whose toxic sludge of lies influences American public opinion. To the degree that when people see factual legal documents like President Obama's birth certificate, they still believe the myth's widely circulated in the media that he's not American. For god sake I just bought from the Obama 2012 campaign a birth certificate coffee mug for the kitsch factor of it all! People right now are really dissatisfied with Brand Obama, even though many didn't vote in the midterm elections to maintain a congress that could back his policies. We get the government we don't vote for!

We are no longer what we produce in the Marxian sense, but we are what we consume - Mac people vs PC people. So political protest through consumption is nothing new - this is the basic logic of the consumer boycott - the bus boycotts of the American South turned precisely on consumers refusing to buy a service. The problem is that capitalism not only alienates people from what they make as Marx observed in the industrial age, but under global capitalism its even more alienating with what they consume. Why do you think people so easily deny climate change? They're unable to see how their consumption patterns impact the sources of what we use. I always ask my design students do they know anyone who has made anything in the room we are sitting in--even on their person? At best I get "my friend made my earrings." One can only hope that consistent reporting by probing news services like the Guardian can continue to bring this to light.

ReadingTim

16 August 2011 3:24PM

Rubbish - these people rioted, looted and stole for the same reason many of them are also lounging around on benefits; namely they want something for nothing, and don't want to work for it. Now they think that if the state won't give it to them, they're perfectly entitled to nick it

GizmoGizmo

16 August 2011 3:24PM

"These were acquisitive riots. Lacking any articulated aims or ideology, they manifested themselves as a venting of consumer spleen."

The acquisitive nature of the riots was ideology at its purest - the same ideology that has been fed to us through our telescreens, billboards, and political discourse for many decades. While people in Syntagma Square, Spain, and across the Arab world have been campaigning peacefully for proper democratic process and social justice, our rioters, too, have had a unified aim: I want stuff. I deserve stuff. I am the centre of the world and screw everyone else. ("because you're worth it...")

You reap what you sow. A society gets the rioters it deserves.

francoisP
16 August 2011 3:24PM
I just find it hilarious that global brands like Adidas (who flirt with gang culture) now have to start to back-peddle furiously as their product becomes associated with violence and general chaviness
- Recommend? (4)
- Report abuse
- | Link

Loserdad
16 August 2011 3:30PM
People are so High on the sugary sweet diet of consumerism that thinking anything could be boycoted is like asking a crackhead to ignore calls from his/her dealer, had the N.O.T.W not closed it would probably still be selling millions every sunday. We the consumer have more of a say than we realise we just need to excersise it more
- Recommend? (1)
- Report abuse
- | Link

booker
16 August 2011 3:32PM
Rioting, Just do it.
- Recommend? (2)
- Report abuse
- | Link

SBUK
16 August 2011 3:36PM
Great article.
Here's a second newspaper article which brings up Debord with reference to the riots.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boff-whalley-in-defence-of-anarchy-2336159.html
- lopdarius
  16 August 2011 3:47PM
  This is the article i wanted to write! Or read. So thank you, Justin McGuirk. You hit the nail on the head. I had read Debord's 'Spectacle of the Society' in relation to the 1965 Watts Riots. This made so much sense!
  I instinctively knew right away that these rioters had 'shot themselves in the foot'. What i REALLY wanted to see was these kids gaining support by targetting their real enemies, not by killing, burning, raping or maiming either. Property damage maybe, since the well policed peaceful protest wouldn't make any difference. It almost seems like a wasted opportunity.
  Like you said, Justin,"In settling for the commodity, they let the system off lightly by falling for its decoy".
  They let themselves down. And made a lot of enemies in the process. So sad...
- - Recommend? (0)
  - Report abuse
  - | Link
- doctorzoidberg
  16 August 2011 4:01PM
  I like the idea that it wasn't so much rioting as extreme shopping.
  I also like the observation "If the looters had been raiding stock options or ministerial expense accounts, they might have got away with it."
  That's the issue that seems to have been missed, at least in the responses of the mainstream politicians. Our entire system, it appears, is an exercise in smash & grab. Whether you are ennobled or arrested is a matter of pure chance.
- offered up in the hope that a second perspective on Debord, anarchy, libertarian socialism and autonomism will help people to see the very great sense which these authors (McGuirk and Whalley) make.
- Recommend? (0)
- Report abuse
- | Link

Loserdad
16 August 2011 3:37PM
Peckham......the London look

CeridwenT
16 August 2011 4:06PM
There's a point to what McGuirk tells here, which is that consumerism affects people's behavior. If that weren't so old PR Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew, wouldn't have used his uncle's theories on marketing products, this way being partly responsible for the most pernicious aspects of present capitalism.
As for the rioters, they weren't justified, despite the oppression some of them (or all of them) suffer. It's a complex problem, which I'm afraid the authorities will deal with in a very shallow way, thinking that punishment will solve the matter, instead of focusing on deeper and more uncomfortable issues, which are the only way such problems could be solved.
Thanks for the article!

Plastic Girls

2011-07-13T08:54:00.015+01:00

Suzie Crisfield, Chelsea College of Art & Design, UAL, 2008.

Tope Tijani, Chelsea, 2009.

Suzie Crisfield, Chelsea College of Art & Design, UAL, 2008.

Fashion Play

2011-01-23T13:17:00.002Z

Fashion Show with Google from Robbin Waldemar on Vimeo.

The Future is Here

2011-01-23T13:15:00.003Z

Taking Pictures

2011-01-23T13:13:00.000Z

No Pop, No Style

2010-11-01T20:38:00.004Z

Nils Volker's plastic wall textile:

2010-08-20T20:26:00.001+01:00

one hundred and eight from Nils Völker on Vimeo.

A History of Cultural Exchange:

2010-08-03T12:33:00.003+01:00

The Future Then

2010-08-03T12:28:00.003+01:00

"Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose."

As Long As It's Pink

2010-07-19T20:00:00.004+01:00

The latest car ad from Fiat.

Penny Sparke wrote her seminal book back in 1995:

As Long As It’s Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste.

Postmodern Childhood

2010-07-13T11:08:00.005+01:00

On cuteness.

When Future Meets Past

2010-06-11T12:35:00.004+01:00

A chapter in my new book is on disco and it's called, When Future Meets Past.

David Mabb's painting

2010-05-27T20:55:00.004+01:00

I stumbled across this artist's work recently.

A blend of geometric dynamics against the backdrop of William Morris:

David Mabb's link.

Woman becomes Billboard

2010-02-22T16:45:00.007Z

At last, women's long-lived dream and role comes true:

to be a billboard.

LED 'Galaxy Dress', Cute Circuit, 2009.

SIMULACRA

McQueen and the Other Side of Glamour

2010-02-11T18:53:00.008Z

Are we talking enough about the other side of glamour?

This is a tribute to two great fashion figures who knew only too well the origins of glamour.

Isabella Blow models a hat by Alexander McQueen (with Treacy), 2005.

Nu Rave Fights Back with Throwaway Plastic

2010-01-12T19:19:00.007Z

In a world of heightened environmental anxiety and fear, throwaway plastic and all that it represents has been experiencing a comeback:

This time, the only difference is, don't chuck it, as these emblems of the last fossil fuel throwaways will, one day, be priceless.

On Consumerism and its Architecture

2009-10-05T17:35:00.007+01:00

Architectural competition categories for ICSC's Envisioning the Future of Shopping: "The Mall Environment; The Shopping Experience; The Merchandise Mix; Dining and Entertainment; Parking and Transit; Green; and General Brilliance and Innovation."

A philosophical stance from Juhani Pallasmaa's The Thinking Hand:

"Today's cities are fast becoming an abstract and alienating construction. That they seem so unreal is not simply because most are formed using computers as the principal design tool, rather than the hand and eye, but because they embody nothing that truly matters to us.

Because human consciousness is an embodied consciousness we gain contentment when what we build is a direct expression of the senses and the intellect, the hand and the mind. By the same token, architectural ugliness or existential falseness can make us experience alienation and the weakening of a sense of self, and finally make us fall mentally and somatically ill."

Preying Bird

2009-09-16T12:45:00.002+01:00

Zero casualties, someone says.

Caged Bird - Extreme Promiscuousness in Adolescence is a Sign of Emotional Disturbance

2009-08-17T17:28:00.017+01:00

It is now a celebrated social norm.

Sugarbabes, a favourite with the under 10s, playing in a cafe near you:

Psychoanalytic Attachment Theory

2009-07-19T18:49:00.045+01:00

Considering the following passage is written in the tome that is "Emotionally Durable Design - Objects, Experiences and Empathy" (J Chapman, Earthscan, 2005) there are elements for concern in view of its analytical scope.

Products by Alessi, 1997 - 2009.

On "emotionally durable design," the key theme of the book:

"In this utopian futurescape, users and products flourish within long-lasting empathetic partnerships, blissfully oblivious to the relentless taunts of the capitalist machine...This designable future, so devoid of obsolescence, waste and serial dissatisfactions, is filled only with attachment, evolution and mutual growth. A revolutionary consumer reality is born, catalysed by new and provocative genres of emotionally durable objects and experiences that are designed for empathy."

Arising from familial and social environments of love, attachment, good communication, containment and trust, the need for consumer products as identity signifiers will tend to be less over a lifetime.

Detachment (in the Buddhist sense) comes from knowing attachment (in the psychoanalytic sense).

In familial, community and social environments that communicate adolescent mindsets, destructive behaviour, neglect and/or emotional abuse, the need for edification through inanimate support will tend to grow.

Plastic lights by design graduate, featured in Blueprint magazine, c.1999.

Click title for further info on the "psychoanalytic sense".

Question to design students:

Looking at the above photo, how is the human object being 'mixed' with the manmade object and what might this tell us?

Statement to design educators:

Differentiation within the discourse of our relationship with manufactured objects is not being analysed enough in the field of design.

Until it is, design educators are not taking responsibility for their subject area.

Dior Couture Health Warning

2009-07-16T19:04:00.027+01:00

So the textiles are beautiful and the pattern-cutting exquisite and every blog out there is raving about Galliano's latest, but there are three undercurrents evident relating to woman and the contemporary fashion discourse that need mentioning.

Firstly, when emulating the 1950s figure and posture, something of a 1950s disposition is required. And first time round, Dior-wealthy women's role was largely based upon repression, neurosis and socially imposed restriction.

Secondly, by not fully dressing the models, the female 'fashion object' that spills into the mediascape appears to be in disarray which creates a more erotic message yet begs the question...

..."Out in your undies again, dear?"

Thirdly, the corset is reintroduced externally, so that the constraint women are evidently feeling today, as much as they did 50 years ago, is available again for societal display and celebration. See Susie Orbach's Internalized Corsetry for the psychoanalytic lowdown. Dior makes it integral to the fashion symbolism and system de jour..

..and makes it clear how Ideal Woman 2009 is accessed.

Futurist Fashion Publication Available Here Soon

2009-06-07T22:45:00.020+01:00

Exciting, paradigm-shifting fashion title coming soon: "Sheen and Deflection - An Analysis of Futurist Aesthetics in Fashion and Textiles" for download.

The first of a brand new series, Fashion, Psychology & Semiotics by Emma Neuberg. Click image to read.

Emotionally Durable Design in the 1990s

2009-05-19T12:56:00.013+01:00

Alessi, 1997 - 2009.

In the 1990s, if it had eyes it was emotionally durable. We will be looking at more of this shortly. Taking a step back from the current sustainability free-for-all and looking at what was heralded as the emotional design vernacular of the last decade, namely luddite fun.

Incidentally, plastics take between 400 and 4000 years to degrade. What would you design?

Fun Shopping

2009-04-27T16:00:00.015+01:00

When you don't know who you are yet, you try things on for size.

Try this for some underlying shopping angst:

JUNGSTIL COMMERCIAL

Expressions of Powerlessness and Paralysis

2009-03-30T17:33:00.013+01:00

Internal distortions applied externally:

Shoes by Louis Vuitton, Spring/Summer 2009.

Foot-binding was introduced in the Sung Dynasty (AD 960-1280) and was applied across China for several reasons, one of which was "it made the women less likely to be able to succeed (Jackson 19)." (Taken from HEYOKA MAGAZINE.6.FootBinding).

For seven hundred years foot-binding was considered normal across China. It was only through shifting cultural insights that the practice was thought to be cruel and damaging.

Spring/Summer 2009 shoe trends.

Old Plastic Flowers

2009-02-13T18:32:00.023Z

How quickly technologies past generate new meaning:

Resin jewellery, USA, 1950s.

How fast the old and discarded become new.

In fact, the relationship with the object becomes one of genealogy.

The relationship with the object does not end, it evolves. The object represents a choice of that which is continued or discontinued. It echoes the relationship with desire (and fashion is proof of desire's social framework: one minute you wouldn't be seen dead in drainpipes, the next minute you're wearing them).

Resin jewellery, USA, c.1950s.

Playstation Sales as Barometer

2009-01-25T23:05:00.025Z

The cumulative effects and affects of non-communication.

A view on some of man's 'internal others' played out by millions of Playstation fans every day.

The unilateral, retaliatory authority figure.

The adolescent unable to navigate.

(There's no default setting to practise negotiation).

The young professional, caught between the two.

In perpetual react/attack mode.

Book Now Available

2008-12-19T20:37:00.012Z

If you're interested to learn more about my studio work with plastics and synthetics and enter a larger debate on materials and their meanings, see the final chapter in this new publication, 'Plastics: Looking at the Future and Learning from the Past' (Archetype Publishing in association with the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2008):

Projections of a Revealing Nature II - LIVE FAST by Diesel

2008-10-03T14:30:00.012+01:00

Diesel ad campaign, Live Fast, S/S 2007.

In 1899, Freud wrote The Interpretation of Dreams. In Chapter One, he writes, "In the following pages, I shall demonstrate that there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and that on the application of this technique, every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state."

In the same way that an artist's body of work tells an autobiographical story of their internal world and its relationship with the surrounding culture, can a corporation's body of promotional imagery recount the workings, direction, aspirations, preoccupations and projections of the corporate 'persona'?

Emma Neuberg argues that it can and, in this light, ad campaigns carry a more helpful, revealing message.

Examples and analyses available in Sandy Black's next book, The Eco Fashion Handbook, T&H, 2010.

Projections of a Revealing Nature I

2008-10-02T19:03:00.016+01:00

Dolce&Gabbana, ad campaign (print), 2006.

Examples of where commercial constructs of women are currently at at the outset of the twenty-first century: frustrated, liable to take-over, isolated, bathed in neon light, lifeless, alone, deranged, hemmed in, looking for contact, frozen, android-like, manipulated, broken:

Examples,

Dior Pure Poison Parfum, TV commercial, UK, 2007.
Dior Addict Parfum, TV commercial, France, 2006.
Dior Addict lipstick, TV commercial, 2006.
Dior Hypnotic Poison Parfum, TV commercial proposal, 2007.

Projections of an Unhelpful Nature I

2008-09-25T13:54:00.004+01:00

Dolce&Gabbana, fashion print campaign, S/S2007.

Feel abused; arouse abuse. In the hope of appeasing narcissistic personality disorders or expounding a societal disorder?

Longtime Innovating Star Maker

2008-09-09T10:24:00.011+01:00

The Tarantula Nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074:

"On its 100,000th orbit of planet Earth, the Hubble Space Telescope peered into a small portion of the Tarantula Nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074, unveiling its stellar nursery. The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, triggered perhaps by a nearby supernova.

"The image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-headed "pillars of creation," and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation. The region is on the edge of a dark molecular cloud that is an incubator for the birth of new stars.

"The high-energy radiation blazing out from clusters of hot young stars is slowly eroding Nebula, and another young cluster may be hidden beneath the circle of brilliant blue gas.

"The region is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite of our Milky Way galaxy that is a fascinating laboratory for observing star-formation regions and their evolution. Dwarf galaxies like the Large Magellanic Cloud are considered to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies."

(Image Credit and text: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)).

The Exploding Plastic Inevitable - Material Projections of Good Object, Bad Object

2008-09-08T17:37:00.017+01:00

"In the hierarchy of the major poetic substances , [plastic] figures as a disgraced material, lost between the effusiveness of rubber and the flat hardness of metal; it embodies none of the genuine produce of the mineral world: foam, fibres, strata. It is a shaped substance: whatever its final state, plastic keeps a flocculent appearance, something opaque, creamy and curdled, something powerless ever to achieve the triumphant smoothness of nature." Barthes, Plastic, 1957.

We have seen the Pacific Plastic Island and we have seen the animals maimed by plastic. We have yet to 'see' the polymers we ingest through fake tan, milkshakes, medication, cosmetics, food, hair products, boob jobs and nail polish.

New i phone anyone?

The plastic story has always been an emotive one, steeped as it is in the ancient conflict between truth and artifice. Are plastics natural? Is carbon natural? It's a bit like asking, are women with breast implants natural?

What is artifice? Who is deceiving whom? When does an object become parody? And what's wrong with pastiche?

Emma addresses these questions in her forthcoming essay, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable - Material Projections of Good Object, Bad Object.

Sheen and Deflection - The Semiotics of Futurism in Fashion and Textiles

2008-09-08T16:54:00.043+01:00

Tracing a line through the work of visionaries from Marinetti to Balenciaga, this publication explores a conceptual and sartorial preoccupation with metallics, transparency, illumination, luminescence and high shine.

Aluminised polyester-laminated leather dress by Dolce & Gabbana on the front cover of Numero magazine (France), February 2007.

By examining the cultural and technological context of designs from fashion houses Courrèges to Chalayan, the author traces the development of futurist paradigms and elucidates methods for reading the myths and ideologies therein.

"The Face of the Future - Luminous, Lovely with Elizabeth Arden's New Illusion Foundation," cosmetics ad, Nova Magazine, 1966.

The commodification of human relationships in the twentieth century and the resultant narcissistic projections evident in futurist fashion and its media representations are hinted at by one of the western world’s most celebrated designers, Hussein Chalayan. In a description of one of his collections he states: “The use of two distinct light-emitting materials was meant to suggest a flame immediately around the body and a softer glow outside – like in religious iconography where a saint is bathed in a pool of holy light.”

Such an Apollo-esque fantasy of radiant wisdom and divine transcendence is frequently central to the futurist’s vision.

UFO series, BBC, 1970s.

Using examples from Tullio Crali's sketchbooks to contemporary ads, the author decodes a persistent strand of visual culture that places youthful woman at the heart of an ideal synonymous with gadget-laden, speed-heralding, language scarce, technological times. Illumination glows, throbs, flickers, flashes and becomes the means of communication.

Giorgio Moroder's "Battlestar Galactica" vinyl record cover, with illustration by Winston Taylor, Polygram Records, 1978.

If design is the cultural assimilation of scientific advancement, then futurist fashion occupies itself with a transformation of human to cyborg, biological animal to synthetic construct with “non-human” characteristics. Decay, softness, vulnerability, spontaneity, animation and social interaction are not readily displayed.

Futurism, a school of thought associated with a reflexive dialectic of speed and control founded in the early 1900s, goes on, in sartorial terms, to arouse a robot fantasy projected on to the female form, its being and symbolic meaning.

UFO series, BBC, 1970s.

Some Video Links (for lecture visuals):

House of the Future
Phillips Probe Dress, 2007
Qui-etes vous Polly Magoo? (1968)
Kylie and Blue Mondays Mix
Logan's Run (1976)
Aelita - Queen of Mars (1926)
Chalayan Video Dress (2007)

(Chelsea College Students: Summary Fashion Video for first three lectures).

3D Futuro Manga, 2007

Barthes' Jet-Man - Today

2008-09-08T13:22:00.032+01:00

Jet-man today has leisure time. At least, he has time for self-portraiture.

Astronaut Mike Fossum, self-portrait, June 3rd, 2008.

"The jet-man is a jet-pilot. 'Paris Match' has specified that he belongs to a new race in aviation, nearer to the robot than to the hero. Yet there are in the jet-man several Parsifalian residues, as we shall see shortly. But what strikes one first in the mythology of the jet-man is the elimination of speed: nothing in the legend alludes to this experience.

At 3:45 p.m. EDT on the third orbit of Earth, Ed White opened the hatch and used the hand-held manoevering oxygen-jet gun to push himself out of the capsule, June 1965.

"We must here accept a paradox, which is in fact admitted by everyone with the greatest of ease, and even consumed as a proof of modernity. This paradox is that an excess of speed turns to repose. The pilot hero was made unique by a whole mythology of speed as experience, of space devoured, of intoxicating motion; the jet-man , on the other hand, is defined by a coenaesthesis of motionlessness, as if the extravagance of his vocation precisely consisted in overtaking motion, in going faster than speed.

Tullio Cralli, Nose Dive on the City, old-fashioned "intoxicating motion", 1939.

"Mythology abandons here a whole imagery of exterior friction and enters pure coenaesthesis: motion is no longer the optical perception of points and surfaces; it has become a kind of vertical disorder, made of contractions, black-outs, terrors and faints; it is no longer a gliding but an inner devastation, an unnatural perturbation, a motionless crisis of bodily consciousness.

"No wonder if, carried to such a pitch, the myth of the aviator loses all humanism. The hero of classical speed could remain a 'gentleman', inasmuch as motion was for him an occasional exploit, for which courage alone was required: one went faster in bursts, like a daring amateur, not like a professional, one sought an 'intoxification', one came to motion equipped with an age-old moralizing which made its perception keener and enabled one to express its philosophy. It is inasmuch as speed was an adventure that it linked the airman to a whole series of human roles.

"The jet-man, on the other hand, no longer seems to know either adventure or destiny, but only a condition. Yet this condition is at first sight less human than anthropological: mythically, the jet-man is defined less by his courage than by his weight, his diet and his habits (temperance, frugality, continence). His racial apartness can be read in his morphology: the anti-G suit of inflatable nylon, the shiny helmet, introduce the jet-man into a novel type of skin in which 'even his mother would not know him'. We are dealing with a true racial conversion, all the more credible since science-fiction has already largely substantiated this metamorphosis of species: everything happens as if there had been a sudden mutation between the earlier creatures of propeller-mankind and the later ones of jet-mankind..."

All in a day's work: Robert L. Behnken, STS-123 mission specialist, instals a spare-parts platform for Dextre, 2008.

Text continued in Barthes' The Jet-man, (Mythologies), 1957.

David Bowie's Space Oddity video (1969).

Also,

Squares and Matrices - The Semiotics of Modernism in Fashion and Textiles

2008-09-08T13:20:00.029+01:00

This lecture introduces Modernism and Semiotics and their meeting place in twentieth and twenty-first century fashion, textiles and appearances.

Tracing a line through the work of visionaries from Giacomo Balla to Jonathan Saunders, it explores a sartorial preoccupation with geometric pattern, graphic line and superflat colour.

Miss Sixty ad, 2004.

By examining the cultural and technological context of designs from designers Sonja Delaunay to Criminal Damage, the lecture elucidates the evolution of modernist print, garment construction and their media representations along with methods for reading the underlying theoretical dynamics.

Using examples from Bauhaus sketchbooks to contemporary ads, the lecturer decodes a strand of visual culture that places youthful woman at the heart of a modern yet anxious ideal. The individuals who wear the clothes are, of course, unconsciously expressing this tension.

Max Mara ad, 2005.

Modernism, the design school of thought perpetuated at the Bauhaus, is associated with a dialectic of material integrity with purity of form. Incorporated into fashion, modernist motifs act out their integral conflict on the female form. Semiotic and critical theories are explored to help students grasp the deeper signifiers with examples from 1919 to the present day.

Plastic disc dress, Gareth Pugh, featured in Vogue (UK), A/W'07.

Video examples:

Modernist Ballet, 1927.

Peggy Moffitt, (1963), fashion examples.

Modernist aesthetics, fashion examples, 1964.

Modernist aesthetics, fashion examples, 1966.

Kylie in music vid with 'modernist' accents, 2007.

Tina Frank's Chronomops, 2005.

Tina Frank's Pitbudp

i Pod ad (currently off-line)

Flora and Flight - The Semiotics of Naturalism in Fashion and Textiles

2008-09-08T13:12:00.019+01:00

A study of flora in fashion and textiles and its media representation from 1950 to the present day is underway.

Fashioning the Synthetic Body

2008-09-07T21:13:00.006+01:00

Tanya, the silicon doll, is selling well, Realdoll, The World's finest Love Doll.

Lecture on the future of synthetics to be uploaded soon.

Hip Plastic - Skeletal Reproductions

2008-09-07T11:35:00.011+01:00

Plastic hips. Skeletal reproduction via Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Rapid-Prototyping Technology http://ablesw.com/3d-doctor/.

Reflections in skeletal self-portraiture..

Ruffles and Regression - The Semiotics of Romanticism in Fashion and Textiles

2008-09-06T11:50:00.012+01:00

Chanel No.5, tv commercial, 2007.

Telling Tales, V&A

2008-09-05T19:12:00.006+01:00

Stage 1 BA (Hons) Textile Design – theory - Friday 16th October, 2009

Tutor: Emma Neuberg

Reading Images and Objects - critical thinking task Exhibition Visits:

Telling Tales, V&A

Make your own way to the exhibition/s

On entering the gallery/space, take an initial walk around without referring to the study task questions. Then begin to respond to the questions below, making notes in your notebook which you should transfer/ put up on your new blog.

1. What is your immediate feeling on entering the gallery and seeing the works? Is the work compelling, repelling, beautiful, confusing, moving, inspiring, strange, familiar?

2. Choose a piece of work from each section (The Forest Glade, The Enchanted Castle and Heaven & Hell) and list the feelings and response that the work generates in you and why.

3. Notice the display of the objects, their relationship to each other and their lighting. How might these evoke feelings of drama, interest and tension?

4. How might these inspire aspects of your Table Theatre?

5.Take notice of the titles of the exhibits and choose two to analyse and discuss in under 300 words.

6. Which designers or pieces particularly caught your imagination and/or inspires you?

Pop and Denial - The Semiotics of Youth in Fashion and Textiles

2008-09-03T10:54:00.011+01:00

JC/DC, 2007.

Safety Pins and Take-Overs - The Semiotics of Nihilism in Fashion and Textiles

2008-07-21T11:33:00.016+01:00

Punk Fashion, Textiles and Appearance analyses on their way...

Hoodies and Separation Anxiety - The Semiotics of Defence in Fashion and Textiles

2008-07-21T11:31:00.021+01:00

Through no fault of the young wearer's own, separation anxiety has been naturalised. This suggests that what the wearer feels, the wearer becomes. The wearer embodies the feeling.

The wearer signals the complex.

Sweatshirts from www.weareaiko.com (Amsterdam).

Understanding the signals and reading the externalised projections is what Dr Emma Neuberg's "Semiotics in Fashion" series is all about.

The synopsis of 'Hoodies and Separation Anxiety - The Semiotics of Defence in Fashion and Textiles' is on its way.

Back to the Future - A History of Synthetics in Fashion, Culture and Appearances

2008-06-11T17:57:00.060+01:00

Vogue (UK), 2003. Details coming shortly.

Tamara de Lempicka, self-portrait (Tamara in the Green Bugatti), 1925.

From Schiaparelli to Boudicca, from Madame Grès to Junya Watanabe, twentieth century synthetic materials pushed the boundaries of modern dress. From cellophane to polyethylene terephthalate, polymers inspired fashion, textile, jewellery and cosmetics designers to explore new territories, create unimagined silhouettes and challenge accepted notions of body and dress.

David Bowie in Yamamoto Kansai's 'Kabuki' costume, 1973.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14VAWmF462M

From the early days of fake linen collars to the latter days of jackets that give the wearer a hug (www.cutecircuit.com/pictures/album/the-hug-shirt-fr-hugs) we have come a long way. And all in one hundred years.

Celluloid (waterproof collars, cuffs and shirt bosoms) advert, c.1901, USA.

When we consider a snapshot of what took place: the Russian Revolution, the Great War, the Bauhaus, the Great Depression, Surrealism, the Second World War, the boom of the Fifties, the Space Race of the Sixties, the nihilism and escapism of the Seventies, the expedience of the Eighties, the hedonism of the Nineties and the sustainability movement of Now, we get an idea of where celluloid, nylon, acrylic, wet-look vinyl, elastane, smart fibres and bioplastics fit into the cultural equation.

Bio-degradable protein-based plastic coffee cup, 2007.

Man-made fibres tell a story of growth, imitation, democratization, idealization, status anxiety, aspiration, military might, consumerism, women’s liberation (and its opposite), space travel, punk, disco, individualism, environmentalism and twentieth century excess.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Mix Bomb Boogie Album cover, 1986. Direct link to postmodern excess (watch til the end!): Sex Bomb Boogie

This lecture introduces students to the correlation between fashion and political context, why chemists have been integral to what we wear, what synthetic materials mean, how to read them and how new looks and aesthetic movements arise.

"Top Fashion Models Help Dupont Sell" by wearing nylon garments designed by Parisian designers, Better Living, Dupont magazine, 1955.

The fabric that surrounds us tells a profound story. Once students have a handle on this, their role as designers becomes more conscious, defined and sophisticated.

By attending this lecture, students gain a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the evolution of synthetics and realise the importance of their own future role in the interpretation and cultural assimilation of materials.

What is Plastic? An Introduction

2008-06-05T14:09:00.021+01:00

Tuber (light) by Lionel Theodore Dean, 2007. (Dean develops digitally manufactured products as a means to satiate the demand for mass-individualisation).

What is plastic? What are synthetic fibres? What are protein-based plastics? What gives different polymers their qualities? Where do plastics come from? And why such ambivalence, to date, towards plastics?

The Kokon Double chair by Jurgen Bey, 2006.

Most design students cannot answer these questions. And yet how much of their world is built around polymers? And how will they be able to design in materials of which they have little understanding?

Rapid-prototyping research at Milwaukee School of Engineering, 2007.

This lecture elucidates what synthetic materials are, what they look like, their diversity of character, appearance and application and how they have evolved culturally, socially and environmentally over the last one hundred and fifty years.

Merrell's sports shoe sole, with a moulded version of Hokusai's “The Breaking Wave Off Kanagawa”, 2005.

If you can answer the above questions then please mail me and we can start up some creative conversations on the changing landscape of the Hierarchy of Substances..

Modernity Manifest: Mondrian, Modernism, Mods and Mod Revival

2008-04-27T19:59:00.018+01:00

Gig flyer for The Beat, UK, September 2007.

Mondrian, Modernism, Mods and Mod Revival have yet to be explicitly linked through the history of synthetics although, as the following images indicate, they share a striking visual language.

Bold colours, dynamic lines, geometric shapes and right angles predominate.

Lecture synopsis and images coming soon!

Mary Quant's two-tone vinyl macs, London, 1966.

"Queen of the Mods' look-alike, 1966.

Some more images (for Chelsea College students):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0x4QjDqzko

Shiny Plastic People - A Celebration of Performance, Pastiche and Excess

2008-04-27T19:57:00.033+01:00

LECTURE VIDEO LINKS FOR STAGE 2 CHELSEA STUDENTS:

Space's "Running in the City" (1978).

Disco Ring early "futuristic disco" (compare with 'Aelita, Queen of Mars', 1924).

Raquel Welch kitsch Futuro dance (to compare with "Polly Magoo" clip (1968).

Stanley Kubrick's graphics sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

David Bowie playing Space Oddity (with graphics), 1969.

Bowie's Space Oddity original video, 1969.

Bowie singing Life on Mars (with blue make-up), 1973.

Marc Bolan: Ride a White Swan, 1971.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9rFoPyqFoA

Neon meets aerobics: skintight fashion begins; the birth of leggings and Bodymap: Travolta's dance rehearsal in "Staying Alive":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC8aCymVnwo

Dancing in "Saturday Night Fever" (not working):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKL2L0ISDfo

Ignore! Postmodern kitsch pinnacle: Space Age, skintight clothing and mass media:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCqdO-k3SAY

Postmodern kitsch pinnacle: Space Age, skintight clothing and mass media:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvWBtaHdXOg

Space' Age, synthesizer, disembodied pastiche: Space's Magic Fly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1llNSdf9cl4

Chelsea Stage 2, 2009:

2008-04-27T19:53:00.008+01:00

Seminar Texts:

Read this week for Seminar 1, called "All Smooth and Shiny - An Obsession with Silver Silhouettes,” on

Tuesday Oct 13th:

Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House, Picador Press, UK, 1981.

Intro and Chapter 1: The Silver Prince

Read next week for Seminar 2, called “I’m Right, You’re Wrong – A Propensity for Black and White Thinking” on

Tuesday Oct 27th:

Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime, Ariadne Press, USA, 1998.

Essay of the same name in the book.

Read for Seminar 3, called ““Pastiche, Artifice and Voyeurism”” on

Tuesday Nov 3rd:

Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality, Faith in Fakes.

Chapter 1, pp.3-57

Other reading;:

Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety; read Chapter 1: Lovelessness.

WORKSHOP 9:

October 10th 2009 - 13:30 til 16:15

"Designer in Focus" - Celia Birtwell Illustration for Printing and Painting on Fabric -

with Print, Applique & Stitch on to Upcycled Fabric.

Explore Birtwell's evocative prints, graphic combinations and fashion textiles lyricism in print and stitch and consider how these may inspire emotionally engaging and durable material stories.

Participants will look at different print and applique techniques to build upon Birtwell's repertoire. Particular focus will be given to print and mark-making on to silk and chiffon, for beautiful, floating, timeless pieces.

Try to see this film:

The Man in the White Suit, (1951), an Ealing comedy, 82 mins long, starring Alec Guiness, Joan Greenwood and Cecil Parker.

This film tells the story of Sidney Stratton, a British 'techno fashion' inventor, who develops a fabric which never gets dirty or wears out. This would seem to be a boon for mankind, but the garment manufacturers don't see it that way; they try to suppress it.

Themes to consider:

insights into the history of the British textile mill;

methods for getting the space/support/backing you need to do your creative work in the ‘real world’;

economic and social distinctions between Management and Workforce in traditional British industry;

negotiating value: rapport building, story-telling, seduction and manipulation;

fascination with the new: hopes and dangers.

A text to ponder:

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, ie the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling class, therefore the ideas of its dominance." (Marx and Engels, 1970).

Marshall McLuhan’s Tetrad Model:

What does the artifact enlarge or enhance?

What does it erode or obsolesce?

What does it retrieve that had been earlier obsolesced?

What does it reverse or flip into when pushed to the limits of its potential?

This is Marshall McLuhan’s Tetrad Model where any invention has “four impacts on the world”. (The tetrad is arrived at through a process of asking questions, based on historical, social and technological knowledge of the subject).

These questions result in a set of four effects, namely: enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal. These four elements are in a resonant relationship or "interchange" with one another; the parts of the tetrad are in a complementary relationship.

Enhancement

Solution to previous problem; the amplification of effects, focus on the practical. Creation of vortices of power;

Obsolescence

The erosion of formerly significant artifacts. The transition of figure to ground.

Retrieval

The recovery of values and insight that was once lost or eroded.

Reversal

Creation of new problem. The reverse of enhancement; the unexpected dissatisfactions. Pushed to its limits, the artifact flips on its user.

The Material Language Lecture Series

2008-04-17T21:44:00.003+01:00

Watch this space for the new Material Language Lecture Series. Available for undergraduate and postgraduate students of art, design and semiotics worldwide.

Synopses to be uploaded soon.