I just realised that time doesn't exist here.
Or, time becomes worn as a bunch of numbers, because there is no date to orientate.

Everything is wearing numbers at the moment.. they must be in fashion.

True story. This is also why the label is now S3-376-9.
Another piece of poetry: the dash is in the place where the 1 should be.

Slurpee girl - the poster child of late capitalism (and how!)
Also - reflexively referencing dimensions of own wearing.


This garden is going to be re-dressed...redressed? maybe. language.. you get me every time.
It may become a destination point for anyone that gets hold of S3137619 - S/S 07.
And yes, i am using my student number as my label.. chalk it up to processes of wearing.
This collection, as seen in the labelled season, will contain many signs of fashion. A fun time would be to see how far the signs of fashion could be pushed, what could actually be turned into fashion? My vote: everything.

(Continuing that thought: what is not already fashion? I suppose the answer is what is not called fashion, but the process is indistinguishable from most aspects of reality.)

Also, future collections will be less recognisable as fashion, and more in the realm of "transient, arbitrary, wondrous channeled moments of the worn" or whatever.

anyone who reads this, and it would be interesting to know if there is someone, is there any loss in sacrificing the old posts to time?
HAH. as if i could embalm them.
Better question: Is it a good idea to initiate their translation? (read: delete them)

Is there any recycling process these dead and worn words could undergo?
(got the idea of recycling information from some zine - thankyou Sticky! ...will draw it out)

I am getting the impression that this whole “post-modern pastiche” thing is not truly post-modern, but rather at the edge of post-modernity, and fighting backwards.

It is as if society is staring into void, inevitably being seduced and seducing, being becoming and becoming, and grasping onto anything and everything that is behind it in a vain attempt to fight nihilism. Furnishing “the desert of the real” with false illusions, that proclaim their illusory nature as the truth of themselves: “There is nothing – I am nothing”.

To overcome nihilism, to become post-nothing, is to overcome the concepts of history, of appropriation, of distillation.

The gallery is the third great church – God did not die, but fled to hide within logic, and when this church too was overcome with “grass and red poppies on ruined walls”, art became the last refuge of the Divine.

As with all that is distilled, once beauty has been abstracted and made pure it is negated – separated and stabilised, the interplay between elements that draws them into existence is nullified. Beauty exists symbiotically with itself, and is seduced by its own centre of gravity – it is the dense, full, ripe void of pure subjectivity. It is the desire of the gallery to distill two sides of a unified perception – to find the duality of an eye that looks into itself… to manifest the divine.

I feel as if my reality has become swathed in clothing.
What is it that I find so uncomfortable about all of these people?
...Maybe it is their fear.

Everything within my constructed world is blooming and frothing... flushing and tingling.
All I wish is for someone to discuss the beauty of the world with, someone to create the beauty of the world with me.

Someone to engage in spontaneous poetry with... to celebrate the wonder of ludic dialectic.

Someone with whom to engage in seductive play..

I have been serene and experimental in my solitude of the last few weeks. I haven't felt lonely.

I am less hungry where there is no food, than at a meal where there is only meat.
I am less invisible where there is no-one to see me.
I am less silent where there is more talking.

I love silence, and i hate stillness.
I have omni directional, perpetual hearing - there is so much noise.


I wonder what the sun sounds like.

I had a dream where uncured silicone ate away a tiny part of my computer screen - i made a portal into the computer and my garden. What does this mean?
Maybe that i need a break from this strange digital relationship.
I started this to discover more about my attitude towards computer logic. Maybe this dream was a manifestation of my desire to "fish where there are no fish" - to find substance in the falseness that i have become attached to?

“Deep yellow and hot red: thus my taste wants it; it mixes blood into all colours. But whoever whitewashes his house betrays a whitewashed soul to me. Some in love with mummies, others with ghosts, and both alike enemies of all flesh and blood – oh, how both offend my taste. For I love blood.”
Book 3, On the spirit of gravity.

By pulling these pieces of language and placing them here in my garden, under my sun, to nurture that which grows, am I not dressing myself in this language? Am I not deadening these beautiful words so that I may force them to life again as my own flesh-trophy? It is true that I choose these words precisely because they correspond to my own perceived identity. I want to drink the white-gold sunshine and suckle the heavy flesh of these words – but is this not another form of consumption and assimilation? Maybe it is not – maybe it only becomes so when I wear the language, which I am doing within this garden. How should I wear these words without consuming and corrupting them?

What a strange digital garden of false substance and multiple suns!

I really love doing these - i should try some more fluid illustration though. They are very weak now, but maybe they will evolve into something that is unique. They are certainly discussing substance.

The circled dot is the alchemical symbol for gold, and the symbol of the sun.

"Or they spend the day sitting at swamps with fishing rods, thinking themselves profound; but whoever fishes where there are no fish, i would not even call superficial."
Book 3, On Apostates
There have been so many moments in my reading of this book where i have just had to stop and sit still.
How does one know where the fish are?
And is it not the act of searching that is profound, rather than the validity of that which is sought?
(aha, but searching is not an act of leisure!)

I am petrified about going back to school.

My process is not refined enough for me to rely upon it, let alone fight to work by it. I cannot be consumed by that weak falsification of a process that they teach, and I cannot assimilate their greedy opinions on and misunderstandings of design.

The only way that I can lie is by convincing myself that I am acting in truth.

If I gorge myself once again on that self-defining kitsch scraping, and they will make me, I will lose everything I have worked for so far. Worse, I will actively deny any truth that has been created within my current distilling process.

I will again be smothering and oppressing my own intuition.

I do not want this!

And I don’t know what to do otherwise.

I am most frightened of the increasingly aggressive and extreme self-definition acts that I seem to be consistently identified as a mirror for. I don’t have the energy to deflect their fear, and they want me to reflect it so that I can be blamed for it.

alchemical symbol - wiki

Now I aim to learn about each of these processes, and understand the role of each as a creative tool -
I aim to translate and distill this list using poetic logic.

fashion as alchemy

This is by Otto von Busch. He is always brilliant. In this writing, he speaks of giving life to the dead object. Does alchemy infuse with life? It does through transmutation, with the translative act being the pure energy, essence, substance of life. I don't know if i like fashion very much - the entire discipline is a continual refinement of the act of denial, and a falsification of transience and translation.
Can i change this?
Is it worth trying?
Does fashion have any other possibilities?
Is clothing culture entirely consumed by fashion?
Can i create clothing without participating in fashion?
Can i design clothing without participating in fashion?


"summoning the very spirit of the mystic force of aesthetics and substance it into matter"
Distilling energy into substance!

from wiki
Fluid connection! Also, Nietzsche may be referencing this in his peaks and valleys, over and under.
Why can't I forge my own alchemical system? Or even perform my own acts of alchemy, in the exploration and refinement (distillation!) of substance.

What do I mean to find within alchemy?

An exploration of the nature of substance

An understanding of purity within substance

An understanding or exploration of the relationship between substance and translative energy.

I would like to explore substance as a creative element – I believe this may infuse my work with density and integrity. I do not believe that it is enough to find imagery and mimic it using generic tools – this is merely scraping the surface (and therefore inevitably creating kitsch – maybe a definition of kitsch is something that exists only at a low resolution?). I do not believe design should be a creative scrap heap, where all beauty is frozen. However, I do believe that it is taught as this now.

I want the things that I create, and in the future the things that I design, to exist at the same resolution as reality. I do not want my creations to be a farce. I want the object to have integrity in itself, and I want every element of the object to be a celebration of its own existence.

Alchemy as ritual.

The joy of ritual within clothing is one of adorning the flesh – this adornment, however, is often an action of shame rather than of celebration. It is also an action of denial.

In contrast, the creative action of alchemy is a facilitator of contemplation – it is a translation of spiritual and philosophical aesthetic understandings between communicative and private realities. Therefore, the discipline of alchemy may just be (among other things) an exploration of the nature of translation – of the density of translative energy (substance?).

Can I find within alchemical and mystical disciplines discussion of the dense manifestations of the translative moment?

An alchemical process may just be a highly refined creative process – one that I would like to explore in relation to my own design process development.

How can garments or fashion be distributed without being approached with a consumptive mentality? This is an important question that I continue to return to, and I believe will continue to inform the direction my work takes. Could an exploration of substance contribute to a possible resolution?

"'Things are ordered morally according to justice and punishment. Alas, where is redemption from the flux of things and from the punishment called existence.' Thus preached madness"
Book 2 - "On Redemption"

Retributive justice as the corrupted desire for silence - the desire for stillness and death.

So, i discovered there is an art movement called Fluxus, and it is close to an area of alchemy in its philosophy.

Energy as pure substance? Distilling and translating of substance to purity..
Alchemy!
I really want to start to learn about alchemy, but i do not know if this is too much of a challenge. There is so much out there.

I am finding the use metaphor in Thus Spoke Zarathustra to sometimes contradict the nature of the ideas presented. There is so much imagery of full and fluid life, where everything swells and blooms in rapture with itself - this is so beautiful to me, but i cannot help but find that only the beginning of life is discussed. Images of rotting are so often used to illustrate corruption. This does not make sense when placed alongside the image of death as an intrinsic part of life - the withering as the inversion of the blossoming. Rotting is the very action of translation - the very action that allows things to continue to swell ad infinitum. Indeed, the sweetness of rotting is just as sensual as the swelling - it is the freezing or prevention of rotting that forges corruption.
Which works perfectly alongside icy cold, pasteurised milk, or leather tanned with petrochemicals.

So.. is the consumptive/cathartic reaction a corruption of the experiential/expressive one?

Is stillness in itself a corruption of silence?

So i need life drawing. Drawing is not a skill that i find easy to work up.

I was challenged recently with the idea that all of our (my) questioning and truth seeking may just be an indulgence. An indulgence of humanity or of falseness I do not know.

I believe that it is not the questioning that is the indulgence - every person has the right and the ability to search for truth (and i would say the responsibility). If there is an indulgence, it is the institution of knowledge. Truth is distilled into books, into objects - the indulgence is in the idea that philosophy can ever be anything but purely subjective.

What are dead things?

What makes a thing dead?

To be an object, must one be lifeless?

Is life what makes a subject?

Are all objects dead?

Does an object come to live when interacting with a subject?

Is a dead thing such as a garment given life as an extension of the subject, without becoming a subject itself?

By adorning, we seek to objectify ourselves. Does this mean that we are seeking death? That kitsch at once fears death and succumbs to it. This would be a fitting parallel to the consumption that at once subordinates and is subordinated.

Al polarities are intimate - indeed, in polarising, we seek the point where the substance exists symbiotically with itself - the point of translation.

I have nothing to say.

I found alot of plants, and now they live with me. I hope they like it here.
I made an environment - mimicing http://un-making.com/
I want to meet her.


It is the purity of substance that i think i relate to so strongly with Nietzsche.

"Oh, it is only you, you dark ones, you nocturnal ones, who create warmth out of that which shines. It is only you who drink milk and refreshment out of the udders of light.
Alas, ice is all around me, my hand is burned by the icy. Alas, thirst is within me that languishes after your thirst."

Truly, within that writing all energy becomes substance.
I have never experienced anything so dense as his fluid rapture - this is teaching me to not be ashamed of my own heavy reactions.

I want to believe that I desire to act with regard for the rights of animals and the environment and humans because it is the right thing to do. However, experience has told me that any belief that places judgement upon others is more often than not an unconsidered opinion. These things that I care so strongly about, feel so responsible for – what makes these actions and beliefs desirable? How do I know that I am not causing harm in my scramble to replace one burden with another?

Is the way that I hold the lives of innocents to be sacred not merely a manifestation of my desire to be innocent (clean) and sacred? Not merely a symptom of my fear of lack of meaning?

If I do not care about human life or comfort – and I do not want to (why?) – what is the point of working towards a sustainable culture of production and consumption?

Everything seems to be based on everything else – maybe that is the problem with logic, that it is a “stacking mechanism”. Things do not sit on top of other things – they lean against each other (symbiosis). This creates energy in their interaction. This energy is what fuels.

It is so easy to challenge the beliefs of another, and so hard to challenge one’s own. Obviously though, it is the only way to true belief, rather than blind opinion.

To live as truth is to be permanently displaced.
To be unburdened by the notion of placement - that is truly frightening. Maybe it is fright.

Viscosity is the bridge that i have been searching for. How appropriate.

We rub falseness into our flesh, in the hope that it will be consumed and consume us. It is inevitable that it will flow off and become dead on the floor. But did we not want it to be dead? No - we wanted it to be dead and us, so that we may be defined and become our own flesh-trophy.
So because it is dead and falls off us, we rub and grind more until that which was on the floor is all around us and consumes us, and we cannot tell that it does not fit, and we are bloated with our own excess of self.

The false cannot take the form of the true, but it does purge into all space that is not flesh, until flesh itself can only be percieved as the inversion of it.

“Showing rather than telling, as children know, even if we belong to the liars’ club, is a far more effective way of demonstrating that facts should never get in the way of a good story. But a really good story dismantles even the showing. It disappears into the unconscious and hypnotises linear time. And when anything is timeless, truth appears as experience.” - Brian Castro, p 24 of A2 in The Age, Saturday 30^th

If I did not have upwards of 8 books being read, and another 3-page list to read, I would love to read this guy. Oh well, another on my list.

This is as much of the list that I can find on my computer (and yes, I really haven’t read Kafka ever):

Emotional design - Donald Norman
Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis (and many others)
Jean-Paul Sartre - No Exit
Haruki Murakami
Schopenhauer
Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness - Caroline Evans
The book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
Cradle to Cradle
Baudrillard
Brian Castro

Where is time?!

I made more milk-flesh, using the exact same technique - it managed to turn out completely different. I am going to need to get a plastic mannequin and paint the silicone on.
I am so sick of trying to do things that i am not capable of. If i am not good enough, why can't i just accept that? I am not oblivious enough to live in kitsch, and not perceptive enough to create truth. And everything is going to burn and overcome me forever.

I get so hurt when i hear people try and talk about how they are "challenging design" - do they truly believe they are this immense undiscovered "talent" bursting and frothing with intellectual rigour and creative freedom? They act as if all other than them is a type of sweet hopelessness that exists purely to allow them to pity with their "inspired" souls - pity is a hard and stale act. Do they truly believe that they can see so much further than those around them? They are not even looking! Do they even possess eyes?
How can you challenge something that you do not even understand? That you do not even make an effort to recognise? I understand that in order to discover something it must be tested - that challenging is the tactile engagement of the learning process. But the learner challenges in the hope that they may one day discover the radiant truth of that which they are testing - not with the desire to trash and trample and muddy so that they may glow weakly next to their flesh-trophy. It is the obvious arrogance that strikes at me - the aggression when challenged themselves. Some people are so filled with fear that their very flesh is hardened - or they force it to appear so. Why must they force that fear upon potential beauty? Why must they call it beauty to me with a stiff face?

Gunk?
If i can create a garment by the end of these holidays, i will be esctatic.
Thinking about it, i have never made a garment that i didn't hate immediately,

"I would believe only in a god who could dance. And when i saw my devil i found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of gravity - through him all things fall." - Nietzsche

I think I might know what it is that makes it so difficult for me to participate in mass society:

I have an intuition for logical and rhythmic inconsistency.

When I read, if something doesn’t flow, I become uncomfortable and unable to follow the language. In the same way, if there is a logical or cognitive flaw in interaction, I cannot relax or participate uninhibited. This is why I find so much of mass culture disturbing – there is neither logical nor rhythmic consistency in any action or object. When I am communicating with people, I cannot help but grimace or deliberately lose attention when something they say feels wrong.

This is why it is not so much the desire for truth that propels me from kitsch, but rather the consistent jarring of logical and aesthetic discrepancies that forces me to seek fluid truth. I do not expect to relax within truth either, and do not believe the state of being within truth is anything akin to Zarathustras inhabitation of the sea (never one overpowered by the other – the self must exist alongside truth). Maybe it is closer to being the singular plane where the ocean meets the sky?

I do not desire at the moment to write about more questions, or to formally question purity or aesthetic expression or any of those other things I manage to continually return to. It feels too heavy and too cold. What of the expressive use of language? Can I not scribble with words as I do with my pencil, gather and naively stitch as I do with layers of fluid cloth?

I desire to immerse myself in language, to act with an instinctual sense of form and flow – just as a hand does that knows curves through practise. I do not desire to conquer words and own them and wear them as my flesh-trophy – I want nothing more than to fill them and make them heavy and dense with life and watch them dance as I do. In fact – what I desire is for my language to mimic the interaction between the garment and the flesh. If the flesh is the primary inversive representation of the private self, and all the mutations and distortions of that flesh then infuse the garment with that same information of the fluid identity, why can language not flow alongside the self in much the same way? Why can my words not be channelled by my perceptions and translations and mutations, to become and flow into an inverted and disfigured form of my own reality symbiosis? Maybe it is not the existence of the realities that is refracted in aesthetic expression, but rather the energy of their interaction. The transient nature of this energy dictates the transience of the “objects” or manifestations – including language.

It is a beautiful thing to perceive writing as transient. Perhaps it is true that written language is merely a bastard of the spoken word? I hope not – I enjoy the din of silence and the still tumult of reading. Words can be replicated and preserved, unlike an object that is treasure for what is it, rather than what it reflects. But surely this cannot be true? I do not look at art to see an object – I am surrounded by all matter that is as old as time. So is the object in art inconsequential? And what is it about writing that is temporal?

And why can I not escape from these thoughts and words? (because escape is not part of the dance, does not build, regresses etc...) I have made a system of answers! I don’t want answers. I want my questions to hate me and taunt me. I want to live sick with desperation for a resolution that I know will inevitably contradict the question, and I want that knowledge to punish me. It scares me that I cannot catch my own false answers within reflexive reasoning out, and scares me even more that I desire to.

critical theory myspace. you've got to be fucking kidding.

my thoughts at the moment: maybe to be a writer, you only have to write.

maybe to be a writer, i merely have to say that i am a writer. i am a writer. so, write?

i really wish i were more proficient at integrating my language process and my visual creative process. just keep practising!
could i really work up my process to a point where i am able to translate ideas fluidly?

This is what i think i will discuss tomorrow.

Experiential/expressive communication – “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. The idea that, with transience inevitable and fluid interaction with the mutative fluctuations of reality desirable (with all fluctuations having an equal and opposite reaction), the body acts as a nexus between inverse realities. Inevitably, all information is distorted upon contact with the intermediate, indeed distorted by contact. Symbiotic relationship between realities, which emphasises the intimacy of polarities. The idea that creative resolution is possible if one is able to let go of the information and allow it to pass fluidly, and kitsch is a symptom of stunted informative transferral (either through opposition to distortion or a lack of contact with the nexus)

Like dance – rhythmic and opposition is inevitably created without training.

I desire to, ultimately, pinpoint the lack of dignity in the consumption of design, and find ways to communicate aesthetically and through function whilst avoiding the void of the consumptive mentality.

So, if consumption is to be defined as: the desire to subordinate an object that conceals the deeper desire to be subordinated by the object (with both invoking little creative effort on the part of any player)

Or is defined as: the human desire for stillness and clarity for and with minimal effort, manifested as the sterilisation of the possessor by the possession (whilst the possession is subordinated)

Or defined as: inverse catharsis
(.. is the cathartic response more instinctual? easier? Than experiential/expressive methods of information transferral
Consumption/catharsis as false resolution)

How is this translated to long-term garment interaction?
Can the garment continually be consumed?
Or once it is consumed, the sterility leeched and the garment fertilised, is the "dead thing" worn as a trophy? Conquered, draped across the flesh in some effortless attempt to have the world recognise that the worn is now an extension of the wearer? However, rather than that the wearer has somehow infused a part of themselves into the garment, as they desire to believe, it is the consumed garment that has been digested, absorbed and indeed adulterated the existence of the wearer. And with most garments being kitsch, this is indeed a flattening of the subject.

Tried mixing the transparent silicone with white acrylic paint. Spread flat. I assumed either the silicone would not mix with the paint, or i would get murky white silicone. However, the fabric that i created is softer and more spongy than the unadulterated rubber, much more flesh-like and less smooth, as well as less shiny. Most excitingly, the fabric is quite porous, which become visible when stretched - looking almost like the grain on leather. I think i have managed to synthesise milk-flesh fabric.

The main downside of the fabric is that it is much less strong than the rubber, and breaks if placed under too much strain. To combat this, i may want to try to bond it to a white lycra or viscose jersey, which could then be allowed to flow from underneath the "skin". The other downside is that this fabric can only be created in the necessary thickness when flat, meaning that i probably cannot sculpt this substance to the body. I could have many under layers of silicone, and have the paint-silicone as the upper layer, but this would eliminate the strange, flesh-like hand. I am really excited about this fabric, as i have been trapped for a few days.

I wonder what would happen if i used actual milk instead of paint?

I find it extremely difficult to read, whether that be the philosophy that i so desire to understand, or a simple piece of fashion hype. I am increasingly believing that this has something to do with my vision - with reading glasses i no longer get headaches, but i still squint, my vision skips and i find it almost impossible to concentrate, as well as being sensitive to light. As a result of this, i find myself often tracing the sound of the words in my head, while thinking about something completely different. This is unbearably frustrating, for the harder i concentrate, the more i reduce the words to sound and shape.

However, reading back over an essay in the book i am trying to read (i have had it for a month, and not passed page 17), i found some of the concepts that were traced, although i have no memory of reading them (let alone thinking upon them), have been responded to in my own writing. How is this possible? Is this a coincidence, or is my subconscious really able to absorb and translate concepts without my conscious awareness? I have found the same thing happening with the work of others that i have viewed. I do not know how to feel about this. I almost feel as if there is an inverse consciousness also inhabiting myself, who i am unable to communicate with. If i am "facing" communicative reality and "based" in private reality, possibly this other self is existing as the opposite. This idea raises many possiblities for the concept of the nexus, and the idea of a symbiotic relationship between realities.

When discussing clothing, the garment and design, I have purposely neglected the phenomena that these combined concepts illustrate and are so often associated with. This may be because I desire to have no recognition of its existence, to become a “fashion nihilist”. It is not so much the societal assimilation that is required for this type of “controlled nonconformity” to be practised, but rather the inane media presence that is built up upon the contrived physical manifestations of social trends. The “trend” is seized upon as some understanding of human display and object interaction, and is subsequently abstracted, torn from any social context that may have prompted it and presented as “fashion unto itself”, a self-feeding and entirely self-enclosed phenomena. This is true for all levels of fashion participation, in all disciplines of consumption.

Why is it that the garment is the focus of so much fashion hype?

Is it related to the vanity associated with much personal adornment, which is obviously also associated with “conspicuous consumption”?

Is it that this type of personality adornment is portable and intimate, allowing for the consistent communication (definition) of the “individual” identity?

Is clothing a scapegoat for a society that loves to believe it is “participating from the outside” (i.e. watching less intelligent or enlightened people go about their trivial actions with a feeling of superiority)?

Why does the fashion media perpetuate this? (I can start to answer this one – you can only create kitsch from inside kitsch)

Is the media “stupidity” i.e. the blatant idiocy of “current affairs” programs, or unnaturalness of television soaps a malicious tactic to draw people in, allowing them comfort in their own superiority to the presentation (to participate whilst believing they are not)?

Is this paralleled within fashion media?

Does this apparent lack of understanding by the brand of their own product (i.e. something is presented as part of one image, but is appropriated by the consumer to project another) promote a perception by the consumer of themselves as a type of “fashion hacker”? Is this understood and manipulated by the fashion distributors?

Is this contrived appropriation (or controlled creation) another way for the consumer to fertilise anonymous garments? (fertilised with what is the perceived identity, which within the consumer is a bricolage of kitsch symbols).

And is this bricolage formed by the relationship of symbols to one another - tracing a "web" to form what is percieved by the subject as a unique identity?

Most of what i am doing with silicone i am documenting, but not posting, It is going around in circles, and not working in the ways that i desire. This image is effective, especially the viscous density of the first one. I may have to make a chunk of silicone and carve it with scissors - i cannot build up on pourable silicone, and with each layer it becomes more cloudy. I have begun sewing messy pieces to milky viscose, possibly to create some type of flesh adornment. I need to stop working in 1/5th scale. I also need to find out how to get rid of air bubbles without a vacuum.

A consumed garment is devoured and assimilated by the wearer, with both entities diluted - the integrity of the garment and the humanity of the wearer are debased and demeaned. But if a designed object is not to be consumed, how is it to be interacted with? A garment could be distributed without the exchange of money, but this would not guarantee the absence of a consuming mentality or approach. It is not the purchasing of the object that invokes its subordination, but rather the “discovery” of the object – the superficial interaction and “reflection” of the self that the consumer “uncovers”. How could garment interaction that is neither comsumptive nor contrived be facilitated?

I have been participating in some third year assessments this week, interacting with the garments and trying to be consciously aware (via reflection) of my role in the performance. In particular, at one stage I was a carpet, furnished with miniature white house objects. I found that I became an open ghost house, observing my incomplete clean objects challenge my sense of scale and highlight the joyous filthiness (rapture burden) of my garment-self. This garment drew me into the dialogue between the sterile, the stale and kitsch representations of transience or translucence. I did not find this interaction contrived, as I was an active participant in the creative process. This action would not be repeated. There was no ready-made, one-size-fits-all gallery “experience”, and in reality my experience was in no way the goal of the dressing. There was no explicit intention of having the information distort, no way in which the creators desired the interaction to occur. This type of spontaneous evocation of beauty is what I desire to facilitate as a creator. In another assessment, the student spoke of how her understanding of the garments evolved with the interpretation of each wearer.

These events lead me to the understanding that wearing is a powerful element within creative process, and continues (refreshes?) the symbiotic dialogue between garment, creator, wearer and viewer. So how to distribute clothing in a manner that recognises this, and feeds fluidly through and alongside the design process? I think it will take me time to fully understand the weight of this question.

I am reading Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism by David Harris at the moment, which I am finding tedious. It is not so much the fact that each of the chapters focuses in on one small area of the given aesthetic at the expense of many other valuable areas (let alone trying to have any holistic consideration of each aesthetic phenomena), but more that the book does not desire to discuss the why – only the what, and how. What does it matter that cuteness is grotesque, if we do not know why we force it to be so? Sure, to demean, but what pleasure do we get from that? Rather, what comfort? Why?

Also, the heavily descriptive, hyperbolic, almost hyperreal nature of the language use (even if it is meant to reflect the aesthetic under discussion) leaves no room for subtlety – there is no negative space in this writing. While I find this stifling, I probably also find it confronting – I suppose I suffer from this heaviness in my own composition of language. Every time I begin to feel beguiled by the words, if my mind at all begins to trace tangents of independent thought, it is immediately crushed by further rounds of emotive chaos. After reading, I feel soggy and confused.

I actually do like this book, but I find it difficult to engage with - validation for my desire to create garments that are experienced and interacted with, rather than consumed. I don’t want to become engorged with as much meaty aesthetics as possible – I want to trace my own path through, around, within and with the object or creation.

Which makes me ask, are books objects?

Silicone! Used Klean Klay to make the shapes, which you can re-use like plasticine. Doesn't take so well to heat though. This silicone is pourable, i couldn't get any higher viscosity and still have it transparent. I did 2 coats here, but i think i could layer as many coats as i wanted - the silicone is so strong i would only need a really thin layer. The shapes are quite cloudy, and the mess around the bottom almost acts as water! It certainly distorts. The main problem is all the tiny air bubbles in the stuff on the bottom, which you need a vacuum thing to remove. I think i could overcome this with really thin layers of the silicone built up - if it were to go against the flesh instead of as a water-filled bubble, it would still have to be molded to the shape of the flesh. This would mean i would also have control of each layer, hopefully meaning i could create interesting distortions. This is the best stuff ever!

This is approximately where i am at the moment. I hope i start to recognise the connections to my writing soon, as well as the connections between some of these images. Chalky/Shiny. The milky white streak in the second image is pure refracted light - fluid and dense sunshine.

Heavily textured sealant pieces. Reminiscent of the shower?

"Aesthetic refraction is as incomplete without the refracted object as imagination is without the imagined object" - Adorno

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refraction

Maybe it is that logic cannot percieve the emotive consequence of the synergies it so desires to discover?

Lacking money and knowledge, i have begun my exploration of materials at Safeway. This is an experiment using a co-polymer sealant and PVA glue. Clearly the PVA glue would dissolve with water, something i did not bother to realise. The sealant, as well as hopefully being quite flexible, may just provoke distortion without the need to be filled with water. This would allow for many more interesting design possiblities. It is difficult to apply without being heavily textured, and while this texture may help distortion, it may end up distorting too heavily and inhibiting clarity. Next time, i will try to apply it using a knife dipped in turps. The last image is a result of auto colour correction in Photoshop, which is heavily reminiscent of the presence of pus in milk. And in my head, this looks like milk trying to be skin.

Apparently you can get brush-on clear silicone for mould making. When monetarily able, i will go and ask here about it.

I have been thinking recently around the idea of linear, or logical though process as a breeding ground for kitsch - believing the “objective” and “rational thought” so exhaled in society to be nothing more than feeble manifestation of the (irrational) human desire for objectivity, stability, sterility and clarity. However, discussing this the other day with a firm supporter of logic, I discovered that what is believed to be logic, or presented as logic within mass culture is just as much a denial of logic as kitsch aesthetics are to art*. Existences that, on the surface, are possibly indistinguishable from logic, but if examined in depth reveal very little in common with logical thought. If a street were created using concrete blocks and stickers, the façade may be very similar to that of a house, but the sunlight will always refract inaccurately (invoking that hyperreal kitsch aesthetic).

If this is true, and mass culture photocopies and denies logic and art in a similar way, what does this say about the relationship between logic and art? Truly, there are many things to be discussed through aesthetic and intuitive media that could never be touched on, or even detected, using a logical tool. However, could it be that there are also logical discussions that cannot be had within an expressive or experiential framework? Logic claims objectivity, and although objectivity is often referenced at inappropriate moments that clearly call for the heightened humane ability to empathise (i.e. when deciding upon the suffering or lives of innocents), it may provide a valuable cognitive tool when utilised with an understanding of the lack of absolution that it offers – an understanding of the inability of logic to perceive ultimate truth, and of the desire of logic to fabricate purity. This game of objectivity, when acting alongside the game of aesthetic translation, may just allow one to see further than if each is played independently.

*At this moment, I am using art as a synonym for aesthetic experience and expression.

More experiments with distortion. This plastic bag was much too flimsy, with the lack of structure preventing any interesting distortion - the fabric moulded immediately to the flesh or slipped off the body. Any stiffer fabrics, however, immediately pose issues with seaming. I need to find a heat source that is powerful but spreads, and melts without warping. Or a crimper?


The interesting thing about this exploration is the heavy references to recent work, specifically the aesthetic of the membrane. The studio being about architecture, i looked at the concept of inhabitation and the interaction between the building and the body, which then became indistinguishable between the garment and the body. The information of the body (these are latex hand information) becoming fluidified (half filled with water) and at once defining the shape of the building (spandex tube), and being defined by it. It is easy to see the imagery of the membrane in the above exploration, as well as the amorphous shapes formed by the non-backlit spandex. What is missing from the above exploration is a sense of density and weight, which i hope i will be able to work on when i begin to take photos of an upright body.

(earlier membrane work)

http://www2.dupont.com/Elvanol/en_US/

http://www.chemistrystore.com/ChemicalMSDS/elvanol_71_30.pdf

Maybe maybe sheets of PVA, rather than PVC, hit with a large jet lighter, over a mould? Could mould with clay etc. This process could be applied to one side of the mould, then the area that sits against the body, limiting the seaming to one area.

suggestions:
paint fabric? using enamel paint?

put enamel paint in water? dye pure latex white/pink then put that in
water/on fabric?

i'll try putting enamel paint in water, although i don't know how well i will be able to mould it. I cant think of any clear textureless fabric.. and i don't think latex is clear, or will be able to hold it's own against water. A combination of PVA (if it behaves anything like PVC) and enamel paint may be interesting, as well as using latex along side these either inside the structure or as a further manipulative tool upon the PVA. This would also dull some of the intense reflective ability of the clear fabric, which i want to work with but may want to eliminate in places.

http://www.technogel.it/

It is non-toxic, and also inaccessable.

Why do we perform?

The adornment of the flesh is inevitably performative – we are either performing our perceived or desired identity, or we are falsifying this action as a manipulative tool. Do we perform to manifest or solidify this identity, to work it through and illustrate it? Do we perform to define this identity? Do we perform to create meaning, by defining, celebrating and slotting ourselves into some social niche – so that the performance itself becomes solidified meaning?

To be consciously manipulative, one must exist and perceive outside that which one would manipulate. There must be an element of insight, not necessarily objective, but undoubtedly fresh. Therefore, when many believe they are manipulating, they are merely indulging in the pretending or falsification of manipulation, whilst unknowingly celebrating the structures of the system that they desire to subvert. This is not only evident in mass fashion farce, but also within design culture, with those who stake their entire performative meaning upon themselves as manipulator truly being manipulated by the system and their own arrogance of sacrifice. This is superficially evident in such design myths as the “genius creator” or the “cut-throat industry”, but is clearly infused with much more depth within the creative consciousness, to the point where much design creation is indeed a falsification of the creative process (i.e. “inspiration”).

So in pretending to others that we are fertilising our self with our perceived identity through some such adornment, we are indeed pretending to ourselves that we can manipulate another from inside their (and, we discover, our) own aesthetic/semiotic sphere. Clearly then, all adornment as performance that comments on existing systems is wholly immersed within those systems, as it chooses to participate in that same dance, on that same aesthetic plane - and obviously aesthetics are more than mere social semiotics.

So why participate in this dance, perform the meaning of each garment along with every other blind performer? To rejoice inside sentimentality, to define the meaning of the self through the meaning of the garment? This participation has been defined as never being purely functional, socially or otherwise. Why uphold the entirety of the system? The false nature of current western mass performance would not be so reviling or contemptible were it not laden with value judgements, forging opinions for the wearer to help them to deny personal responsibility and to trace out a hygienic area to exist within.

And what would a dance outside this realm of pretending and stillness – for people define these hygienic areas by forcing the dance to be as stale and logical as possible – look like? Feel like? Is it possible for one born into so many layers of false burden to ever construct through them to light freedom?

An earlier exploration of distortion, and a diagram for the planned fluidification of the flesh. This may or may not be realised using PVC, but definately using water.The garment must mimic this full form without structural support or rigidity. This is one possible method for achieveing a manual fluidification of the flesh nurtured by garment interaction.

This is anticipated as becoming a digital (logical) archive of the work of Crystal Dunn, a fashion student and one who does not understand. It may become something else, or may cease to matter and contribute to digital trash. By converting her creative exploration to digital media, by placing it inside the confines of logic and code (and therefore objectifying the work as much as is possible), she hopes to discover the truth of the social obsession with logic, stillness, hygiene and pretending. Among other things.