Virtual Fashion & Virtual Bodies
How immersive technologies and virtual experiences play a role in fashion and perception of identity
Friday December 2, 2022 | Jurriaanse Zaal | 14.30 - 17.00 hrs
This lecture programme will critically investigate and explore how immersive technologies (VR/AR/MR) are deployed in fashion.
The promise is that virtual fashion can lower the impact on the environmental footprint. One can offer clothes without: material production, waste and pollution and fashion shows without international flights. At the same time one cannot deny the high carbon emissions for using energy in the digital world.
Next to the green shift emerging digital technologies inform & inspire fashion and the creative freedom it offers. There are for instance no restrictions to (sample) sizes, or one can easily shift genders. There are also limitations by gravity or material properties. This means there is enormous freedom to experiment with ‘who you are’, what ‘you want to be’ or ‘what your needs’ are. Virtual fashion allows us to re-imagine our gendred bodies, challenge the boundaries of our human species and expand our understanding of identity.
Virtual Fashion & Virtual Bodies, will showcase best practices of today's and tomorrow's most renowned digital (fashion) designers and artists. They will take us along their journey and show us what kind of creative technological applications in virtual fashion have a tangible future and sustainable potential.
Would you like to attend this event? We have a limited amount of guest tickets (relations/alumni/staff) available. Please fill out this form.
Image by third year student Beyza Demirci
Programme
14.30 - 14.40 hrs | Introduction and opening by Aldje van Meer (senior lecturer, researcher WdKA) & Moderation by Leroy van Halen (fashion designer, researcher and tutor WdKA)
14.40 - 15.10 hrs | Beata Wilczek – Fashion Planet
Beata Wilczek works across fashion and tech as a researcher, educator and strategist. She is an advocate for sustainability, digital transformation and systemic change in fashion and creative industries. In 2021 she founded a fashion consultancy Unfolding Strategies and joined NFT marketplace The Dematerialised as a Head of Impact. How can digital fashion save our world?
15.10 - 15.40 hrs | Sander Veenhof – Experimentation and future expectations regarding AR and fashion
Sander Veenhof is an AR pioneer and one of the first artists to create innovative use-cases for AR, VR and Hololens mixed reality. In this lecture he will show his many experiments regarding virtual fashion. He thinks a real boost can be expected when consumer AR glasses will hit the market. Step by step, we'll enter a new era for digital fashion, with some problems to fix, but with way more new and interesting opportunities to explore.
15.40 - 16.00 hrs | Anouk van Klaveren presents the work of third year Fashion Design students - Interactive Future Fashion concepts
Anouk van Klaveren (fashion designer, tutor) will present the Virtual Fashion & Virtual Bodies programme of the Willem de Kooning Academy. She will talk about the creation of the interactive future fashion concepts by our third-year Fashion Design students. Within their interactive exhibition they explore the boundaries of immersive technologies and critically examine what virtual fashion means for them.
Below you will find a small collection of the work by the third year students. Click here for a detailed webpage about all their projects at Playground.
16.00 - 16.30 hrs | Nik Gundersen - The Virtual Fashion Experience
Nik Gundersen is an outstanding (digital) designer. He has developed a very special handwriting and aesthetics in digital object and set design. He shows how a combination of visuals/ aesthetics, movement, interaction and material expressions can result in special immersive experiences. Gundersen takes us along in his narratives in which the future of technology and fashion is intrinsically linked.
16.30 - 16.55 hrs | Juan Lacroix - what role does fashion play in our phygital future?
Juan is co-founder of IOTAS, an Eindhoven based phygital fashion brand. IOTAS stands for Infinity Of The Artificial Skin and explores our possibility for infinite digital identities in the metaverse. They do so by creating inclusive digital wearables that users can wear in virtual worlds and games to express themselves, as well as physical wearables to communicate the bridge between our current lives, and our future, digital, lives.
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16.55 - 17.00 hrs | Closing by moderator
17.00 -18.30 hrs | Networking & drinks
We invite all participants of the lecture programme to join us for a drink and to visit the interactive exhibition Future Fashion Concepts by our third year Fashion Design students at Playground.
