Exhibition in Bergen (Norway)

Exhibition opening 19. Aug 6pm , concert 6:30pm

Exhibition period 20. Aug – 25. Sept 2011

The exhibition Soft Technology was shown at SOFT Gallery in Oslo in March with four e-textile works by Norwegian and international artists and designers. We thank you for the participation in both the opening and the workshop and concert with Syntjuntan.

On Aug. 19th the exhibition Soft Technology will open again at Gallery 3.14 in Bergen, this time expanded with nine works and a collection of prototypes and samples from participants in the Soft Technology research project. The audience here will be able to touch and pull, make sound and even see and experience how electronic textile works.

The exhibition at Gallery 3,14 in Bergen shows works that takes smart materials, e-textiles and traditional electronics as a starting point in the development of the work. These are works by international and Norwegian artists that take different approaches to materiality, technology and context, and tell different stories. Still they have in common a quest to give the unstable, unknown and unpredictable a form and a visuality, both in content and materiality.

Kristina Aas (NO), Berit Greinke (DE / U.S.), Hilde Hauan (NO), Elin Igland (NO), Kobakant (AT / US / JP), Astrid Krogh (DK), Celine Marq (FR / U.S.), Hillevi Munthe (NO) and Ricardo O"Nascimento (BR).

Soft Technology is a research project on textile electronics in an artistic context, carried out at Atelier Nord in Oslo and the Art Academy in Bergen. Soft Technology is produced by Atelier Nord in collaboration with the Art Academy in Bergen and Gallery 3.14.

Concerts performed on the piece "Mønsterundersøkelser av lyd nr 1" will be played on weekends during the exhibition period.

Wednesday 31 August 5pm book launch of "The Temporary Embassy" by Anders Rubing. In cooperation with KHiB.

Lydgalleriet is also taking the opportunity to curate a sound piece for our Parabol-series in the passage.

Soft Technology is produced by Atelier Nord, more information www.ateliernord.no

Summer session at V2

I will spend this summer developing a project at V2 (www.v2.nl) together with more 3 artists. We are part of the e-textile group, a group of people interested in smart clothes that meets once per month in Rotterdam to discuss and exchange ideas about technology, clothes, materials.

For this project here we are four:

Ricardo O'Nascimento

Meg Grant

Anja Hertenberger

Leonie Urff

All I can tell know is that we are gonna work with knitting machines... stay tuned.

Last adjustments

I am now finishing the dress for the presentation on friday. All the sensors are connected and working. The code in arduino was made by Ben and the fashion design was co-made by Carol Chan. It is nice to involve more people on my artwork and see that everyone is very excited about. Documentations will come soon.

sound amp

I am planing to use these speakers in the dress and create a sort of a pattern with them.

To amplify the signal i am using the following circuit with LM386

fabric Market

Today me and Carol went to the fabric market here in Taipei for a visit to do some research on patterns and colors. It is an old building full of stands. The entire neighborhood is full of shops with fabrics, accessories, stones, ....

we found some nice patterns. We expect to finish the design this week.

Taipei Artist Village

I am now in Taipei (Taiwan) to develop a new piece. This piece is about music, culture and tradition. Before i came here i had no clue about the Taiwanese history and culture. I have to confess that I am very impress about how this people went into so many things, specially when it goes into trying to preserve their own tradition facing the many foreigners that took over their land.

I am still figuring out which kind of music i want to work with and for that i am having lots of help. But for sure i want to work with tribal music.

I am also working in collaboration with Carol Chan, a young Taiwanese fashion designer.

Today i found this little movie about tribes in Taiwan. Please, have a taste.

How technology is changing the fashion show

The release of new technologies present us with new formats to convey information.

Fashion designers are aware of those transformations and are changing the way they present their works to the audience. it is common to present a new collection in a catwalk where models wear the creations and walk for pleasure of the people.

One of the first fashion designer to introduce technology in a innovative way in his presentation was Alexander McQueen. His shows are famous for its production that always include something original. To present the summer 1999 collection he used some robots interacting with the model. The result was a dramatic performance.

After that, McQueen amazed his public in the fall/winter 2006 collection presentation using a holographic projection of the super model Kate Moss.

Recentlly Hussein Chalayan decided to present his new collection only using video projection.

Following this trendy, the brazilian brand Ellus (www.ellus.com.br) presented their collection using 3d projection technology.

I am excited to see new visual effects on the presentations. There are many technologies that could delivery a dramatic effect that were not explored so far. I could mention some like augmented reality, motion tracking and interactive feed back with the audience for instance.

I am wondering: Are the real models becoming obsoletes?is the body not enough to represent the complexity that characterize our society and is reflected on the fashion world?