body-movement-fashion

course director: Liting Huang

collaborator: Sherry Peng

May-Jun 2014

design foundamental (II)

Dept. of Fashion Design, Shi-Chien University, Taiwan

This workshop explores a design process from body movement to fabric construction. It was divided into 5 stages over 5 weeks.

STEP1. RESEARCHING

The 3 core texts for this project were:

Form and Function by Horatio Greenough
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Dance Thearapy, translated by Cheng Min, Sun

Each text deals with ideas of form, transformation and students were encouraged to think about how these might translate into a fashion concept.

STEP2. MOVEMENT

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I invited actress Sherry Peng to contribute to the process with 3-hour body awareness workshop. Students were encouraged to move according to her direction and record their actions with the mobile phones.

STEP3. ANALYSIS

The moving image footage was then transformed into geometric forms on paper. Students were asked to sense the flow and movement of the body in a collection of sketches.

STEP4. FABRICATION

The drawn, video and still images were then transformed into dots, lines and surfaces. Muslin was used to shift the abstract into the concrete, maintaining a trace of the body memory and energy flow. Students were also introduced to primary design principles and an understanding of aesthetic and geometric elements.