Carmem Saito
Touch and Motion of Reality - A practice-based inquiry on augmented fashion practices

While language, imagery and technical knowledge play a huge role in informing retail technologies, tacit and subjective experiences are broadly overlooked. Using online retail as the object of investigation, I examine mediated interactions with a new generation of materials in relation to sustainability strategies adopted by the fashion industry to investigate whether the different aspects of human sensitivities can lead to novel ways of addressing consumption. This focuses on material resources within the imperative of automation technologies, extractivism economies and the escalating ecological crises.

What I want to propose is an imaginative exercise to think what if fashion’s technological developments were rooted in and with the intent to augment situated and embodied knowledge to reimagine consumption. This project aims to build prototypes that present a relational framework of practices that augment tacit experiences in the digital environment, with the intent that they can break the imaginary boundaries of what consumption and dressing can be in order to unfold future fashioning possibilities. These will provoke a reflection on the extent to which fashion practitioners (designers, garment makers and other forms of fashion labour) and consumers can harness from their practical knowledge with materials to engage with the technological developments that are restructuring this field.