Victoria Geaney
Vital Assemblages: A Fashion-Led Research Investigation into Collaboration Between Fashion Design Research and Biology
Summary
This project examines the interrelations, roles and agencies of the fashion-led researcher, biologists and bacteria, within a series of collaborative assemblages. My fashion-led research PhD adds to understandings of the types of distinctive roles taken on by fashion-led researchers within interdisciplinary teams. I am investigating the potential of the relationship between fashion-led research and biology, asking: what can a collaborative approach between fashion-led research and biology contribute to fashion design research? This research provides new insights into the significance of materiality, agency and the assemblage to the fashion-led researcher in formulating, leading and curating these forms of interdisciplinary interactions.
Additional info
My doctoral research enquiry centres on collaboration, and the relationships between stakeholders within collaborative practices between fashion-led research, biodesign and microbiology. My key methods include first-hand practitioner-researcher insights into collaboration; ethnographic practices through operating in laboratory and fashion design studio settings; in-depth interviews with key stakeholders and participants; case studies as method; and designing, developing and facilitating workshops to underpin my data findings.
I am part of the London Doctoral Design Centre (Arts and Humanities Research Council) and have initiated collaborations with synthetic biologists and microbiologists at Cambridge University, Surrey University, and Imperial College London. My Harvested Sunlight project with Dr Simon Park is included in Rachel Armstrong’s Experimental Architecture: Designing the Unknown book (2020). I have contributed a chapter to Leslie Atzmon’s Design and Science book (forthcoming 2021).
INCIPEREM – to begin
Inciperem or ‘I begin’ used interpretative performance and poetry to represent the processes that bacterial cellulose undergoes in order to form into a biomaterial. The intention of employing these artistic, qualitative methods was to interrogate the development of a biophilic consciousness to development an empathetic relationship towards materials. The waistcoat was made in collaboration with synthetic biologists at Imperial College using laboratory-grown, functionalised bacterial cellulose. Sections were coated in green fluorescent protein originally extracted from the Aequorea jellyfish, to produce a biological form of wearable technology – glowing under ultraviolet light.
Credits: Victoria Geaney, Imperial College London, bacterial cellulose and green fluorescent protein (waistcoat and film). Photographer and director: Andrew Contreras. Model and choreographer: Liza Weber. Hair and Make-up: Kat Krupa-Ringuet.
LIVING LACE
Living Lace was produced in collaboration with Dr Simon Park (University of Surrey), exploring the production of hybrid cyanobacteria and cotton lace biomaterials. These experimental textile samples investigate both the potential of photosynthetic materials, as well as the relationship between humans and nonhumans. This blurring or entangled co-authorship is characterised through a mutual respiration, the humans expending carbon dioxide and inhaling the oxygen produced by the bacterial other and vice versa.
Speculatively, these cyanobacterial biomaterials are interesting to consider in terms of the future development of sustainable materials, drawing on the inherent photosynthetic and autotrophic properties.
Credits: Victoria Geaney, Dr Simon Park and photosynthetic Cyanobacteria Oscillatoria (grown over cotton lace on agar plate). Photography: Victoria Geaney and Dr Simon Park.
LIVING LIGHT DRESS
The Living Light Dress is a living garment, covered in living, deep sea bacteria that produce a soft, blue bioluminescent glow.
The piece was produced with Dr Bernardo Pollak and Dr Anton Kan (University of Cambridge). We worked with Photobacterium kishitanni, on a nutrient enriched agar and raw wool fabric. The piece is posed as a provocation and not intended as a wearable garment. It is temporal, living only for 3 days or as long as we continue to feed the colony, which shows us it is living through its light emittance.
Credits: Victoria Geaney, Dr Bernardo Pollak, Dr Anton Kan and Photobacterium Kishitanni dress for Wired Magazine. Photographer: Chris Hoare. Model: Manuella Gomide at d1 Models. Hair and make-up: Victoria Winfield.
