UOW: day 6

I was pretty relaxed when i went to bed on monday night, if not with a head full of code and programming and interactivity mush (like i said, i'm totally novice and still have to bend my head in new ways about this stuff a lot). 

But do you think i slept well?? no. some squeaky noise kept going all night - woke me up enough to bother me and i got up this morning with a headache. Not a good start to the day in anyone's books.

Today's account will be in point form, in keeping with its tone:

- Schlepped to Jaycar to get aligator clips (found bonus set of wireless digital headphones to hack into - the most expensive chip i've bought so far. 

- Almost back at uni, I realised that i left my phone and sunglasses at the hotel. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

All that smugness from yesterday's sense of accomplishment: down the gurgler.

- Found missing arduino and raced into class. thankfully I presented at the end of the lesson, so had time to deal with my lacking caffeine levels.

Surprisingly, after that the day impoved.

Chatting to second years was fun - some of them are feeling so overwhelmed with electronics. 

Which i can relate to. 

I passed on some valuable information I received as a student from one Philip Wilson, who was a third-year to my second. Phil said: use second year to experiment. At no other time will you have access to the kind of material and studio that you do now. Plus you have leeway. In first year, you don't get time to do anything, third year, you have to focus on your project, but second year - go nuts. (And i did.). Actually, the second year spirit underlies a lot of my practice nowdays, so it was nice to revisit that important moment in my learning.

I had some beautiful conversations with a couple of students who were keen to chat either about coding environments, or about how to 'get out there'. it was so lovely to pass on 'how to be keen'.

During lunch i pulled apart my super-expensive transmitter, excitement plus!  i realised i must have been learning something about how circuits and electronics work 'cos i ascertain what was important and what what wasn't. I don't quite know, yet, how to make it interact with an arduino board, or control it yet, but hopefully i will. 

After talking to the second class of second years, who weren't quite as interested in what i had to say, i raced over to Bldg 25 to join the faculty of creative arts for an afternoon tea. whilst not quite as rad as CIA's morning teas, it was pretty special anyway. great cake, nice to be introduced and chatted briefly with some music teachers. yay.

Back to Innovation Campus to spend 3.5 hours not getting anywhere with my arduino. I managed to hamfist a soldering job and bust my lilypad development board. huzzah. i just wanted to set up a script so that i could test the flex sensor, and set up and if/else statement to write to digital, so that when the flex sensor flexes up to a point, the light goes on. and anything over or under that, it goes off. no luck. nada. zip. 

i gave up, ran for the train (again) and spent the rest of the trip writing up these blogs.

meh, yah, meh.

UOW: day 5

For a Monday, i had a pretty good day. 

I spent most of it on the main campus in Building 25 - i started off sorting out some problems with my computer and setting up insurance, which was very adult of me. 

-I did some other application/admin-type things;

-Uploaded the documentation from Thursday's Listening Project and

-Emailed around a call-out for participants in another one, planned for 4pm.

I caught up with Jo Law,  one of the Media Arts lecturers, and whose students i'll was booked in to talk to the next day and we sorted out what I might discuss.

Then i met Robyn Douglass, the TA in the textile studio, with whom I'd booked a textile screen-printing session. I had been trying to print the lists from Listening and Being for ages - having little success at CIA. 

And now i know why - i had too heavy a hand and too narrow a squeegee. Philosophy for life, really.

It was excellent to get a print refresh - i hadn't done any emulsion exposing for ages and my process was a little rusty. Now i feel like i could do it again really easily (and may do, if i get some time).

Mostly i printed tests, albeit nice-looking tests. Red ink on calico and curtain backing fabric, with varying degrees of success. 

The ultimate plan one day is to print some large, long scrolls of the sounds heard on listening projects - replicating old public documents, or manifestos, or creeds. That will require a much larger screen and a large-format printer, but it can be done.

documentation from Day 3

At 4pm, I started my listening project, then had a student from third-year, Jess Millman, join me. 

We listened (in stereo) for 30 minutes, to the same site I did on Thursday. It was great for me to revisit the site and note the differences in the time of day and the quality of headphones i was using as a prop. In the comparison afterwards, it was quite validated to realise we heard similar sounds (the overwhelming sound of scuffing shoes) and had similar difficulties discerning large volumes of conversation. I'll upload some documentation for that later today, hopefully.

Overall, it was a good day. I had booked into a serviced apartment for the night and perhaps because i knew that i didn't have to rush back to Sydney that night, i was a lot calmer.

I set up the apartment as a mini-studio, paid the overpriced internet connection (a future rant on that later) and did a bit of work, made dinner being as resourceful as i could (boiled pasta in a salad bowl full of boiling water in the microwave) and worked on a presentation for the students.

Annoyingly, when it came time to sit down and start working on my arduino, i realised that i left the main board back at the University! Aaargh! so annoying… especially as i've been carrying it around with me for the last 4 days, working on it on the train (and maybe trying to become one with it so that i understand it better).

I really couldn't do anything more, so i did some more research, trying to find code that might fit what i want to do: use flex sensor (input) to create sound with the wave shield (output), use lilypad accelerometer (input) with arduino shield (it included an extra 4051 chip, though), and simple code for flex sensors.

When i knew that i had enough, i did what any self-respecting girl would do in such circumstances: 

I went to the spa and sauna.

leigh bowery

my friend and performance artist (in a printer's body) marcus brown, mentioned leigh bowery a while ago and it has taken a while to sink in.

today i happened upon a book of his fashion shoots with fergus greer and i have been instantly obsessed.

i'm craving a bit of OTT identity/gender-bending mischief in the fashion/performance style of things at the moment. there's a whole lot of stuff that just feels kinda vanilla. maybe i'm just jaded and restless. maybe i'm too gen x slacker for my own good.




as fabulous as her costumes are, lady gaga just doesn't really cut it for me - she's still doin' the ditsy diva with the pretty clothes business; american apparel and vice mag for the kids tried to pretend they were pushing boundaries but really, they were just perpetuating the same old skinny lolita pervert bullshit for the white middle class douchebags of the future. our own schapylle scragg is a breath of fresh air, but she doesn't get as much playtime as she used to (ahem. mayhem).


anyway, enough of my ranty business, i'm gonna go back and buy the book i spent an hour poring over and i'm looking forward to reading more about the sunshine kid, watching the legend of leigh bowery and making up for my terrible ignorance to date.


images: leigh bowery from from the inside out and fergusgreer.com

shirt woot

i can't remember who told me about these guys, but they're rad.

i bought the shirt that everyone was posting about, but i don't care. it's red, it's funny, it was pretty cheap and the shirt woot kids are ace.

so there.

ps. the packaging has commissioned artwork on it. take that UPS.

ninja shoes

i bought new sneakers recently - tigers that i've wanted for a while. i reckon they look pretty awesome, but the thing that i'm most excited about is how quiet they are! i thought the sneaking up the stairs scene in kill bill was just visual metaphor!

they're like 0db trainers - i can't even hear myself walk through the gallery on concrete floor.
it's so much fun pretending to be a ninja, sneaking up on some imagined assailant.

it never occured to me that silence can be so much fun. it also never occurred to me that it would be an anomaly to not hear myself walking. in fact, it has altered my sense of space a little over the last week or two.

i certainly didn't expect that when i bought them.

fashion + mathematics = fashematics

thanks to the hussein chalayan blog, i've discovered my new favourite blog: fashematics.

it's not really a mashup between fashion and mathematics (that would be too much for my poor little heart right now), but it's at least basic arithmetic on the catwalk (1 + 1 = 2).

UPDATE: this one is especially for raphael, simon and dunjatello.


here are a few hot ones from march:

alexander

most of you who know me know that i'm not very stylish. i do my own thing, but if i manage to look well-put-together, it's by accident, rather than design.

however, i have always had a secret love for fashion. of a particular ethos. i love the stuff that pushes the boundaries of form and function. of shape and image. of wear and wearable. and, now more than ever, i'm interested in the action of fashion - the behaviour of wearing and the codes of the industry.

and the reason that i've had this very small, but burning love is because, when i was 18, i saw a short interview with alexander (lee) mcqueen. vivienne westwood may have been the godmother of punk (and she still is, really), but it was young alexander who showed me that fashion and clothes, and sculptural form could be as seditious as a bar chord and a molotov.

sadly, his suicide has taken another shining, flammable beauty from the world. and, as a friend said today, 'if an amazing and beautiful genius like that can't make it in this world, what hope is there for the rest of us?'.

vale alexander mcqueen.

draped

a few weeks' back, the lovely ladies at handmadelife did me a favour and recommended two fashion shows, currently on at the NGV: draped and together alone. i managed to pop along to draped and boy was it ace!

i am pretty damned daggy, when it comes to my sartorial credentials. this has been confirmed by my flatmate, orri henrisson. and he should know.

however, i have developed a love of fashion processes and codes, through my friendship with the curator and orri. in the last few years, a lot of my work has embraced a lot of the gestures of fashion (measurement, wearable architecture, decollete adornment, etc) and i've developed a heavy-breathing-type fashionation with roland barthes and his fashion system.

so it was with an eager step that i popped along to see draped - a show which touched on the trends of drapery in fashion over the years, separated into two main types - clinging and elevated. one which is all dignified and ancient, the other about gettin' it up in there.. (my words, not theirs).

honestly, i would LOVED to have seen this as a seriously extensive thematic survey at somewhere like the V&A. but, for the smallish show in the textiles gallery at the NGV, it was still pretty rad.

there were stunning works by versace, lanvin, D&G, paco rabanne, along with some small ancient draped figure sculptures, to put the concept into an historical framework. however, i gotta say, my love attack was for three works that are by my favourite designers and fashion rebels:





the galliano for dior boned inside-out dress - one of my favourite and one which i spent a lot of time drawing and studying; rei kawakubo's black 'tornado dress' for commes des garçon and of course, my main man, hussein chalayan. his show was so amazing at the london design museum - changed my life and seeing just a small piece of his here reminded me of his relentless and prolific practice.



one interesting thing i noticed was how different the shape of mannequins have changed through the ages, reflecting the desired body type. note the difference between 1990s Versace decollete, and the 1890s Victorian shape. And i guess, as an institution, somewhere like the NGV has to keep and keep up with the mannequins of the time period - can't fit a Versace dress onto a Victorian model, it'd be all wrong.


so if you need your fix after seeing this week's couture run from paris, head to NGV. it will be just enough to satisfy until the loreal melbourne fashion festival kicks off in march.

at our most public

"Indeed, when we dress up, when we're on display and at our most public, these are the times when our costumes get the most pretendy - we get married dressed as princesses and officers - then go back to our everyday lives dressed as squaddies, rockstars or resting athletes."

a beautiful quote by russell davies in his fabulous post about pretend, costume, fashion and a whole range of ideas around playing roles.

i've been cycling around ideas of fashion, headphone culture and their roles in public, so this is perfectly timed, as usual

london proxy required: hussein chalayan sample sale

it is one of my life's ambitions to own a piece by hussein chalayan.
i'm so not high-end sample size and nothing would probably suit me, but by god i would love to be here.



can somebody please go on my behalf please? ta.

using a fashion device.

Over the last year, i've been doing more and more conceptual work, primarily about the process of measuring spaces.

Not being a natural born killer on screen, and not wanting the work to be about 'me' per se, i've taken to using a fashion device as a costume of sorts: my black st pauli cap and a black hoodie.

It has been interesting to see it creep into my process on a semi-conscious level and to notice the relationship between what i wear when i am doing these process works and how it fits in with what other artists have used when making similar works, primarily joseph beuys, eminen and every graf artist in the history of the world.

I certainly didn't set out for it to be that way. It just happened to be what i was wearing the first time i documented the measuring and patterning of the RMIT toilets. In fact, most of my friends will attest to the fact that black jeans and hoodie are pretty much my uniform during winter anyway. But the fact that it has moved from happenstance to choice is interesting to me. It has become a symbol of anonymity, comfort and specificity for me now. I step into a mode through this moda and it enables me to focus. Same goes for costume throughout the history of theatre.



The thing with the hat is kind of fascinating and little embarrassing in its obvious (although unintentional) link to beuys. i'm sure that mr beuys used the hat in similar ways- as a screen to hide behind, regular symbol of his process and a personal motif, so maybe it's unsurprising that there's a sartorial link.





And then of course there is the uniform of making (often uncommissioned) work in public- the black hoodie. Contemporary fashion device of blending in and hiding- a dime a dozen. Which also also happens to be bound up in political action, as suggested in the pics of G20 protests on flickr and eminen's cool mosh vid from 2006. The hoodie has become a fashion item of the public space, in terms of interacting with it. It's the street version of the black cloak and wig of law, or the black polo of architects (i jest).

if i had more time, and i was a fashion grad student, as opposed to half-arsed blogger, it could be an interesting point of research: fashion devices used in public and performance art.

In the mean time, you have this.

standardisation of measurement in fashion.

this morning at 8am i woke up to a text message:

"lauren, are you an American Apparel M?"

with my fuzzy brain, i was able to realise that my dear friend seb, in germany, was asking me what size clothing i wore, if i had bought it from American Apparel. I've not ever bought anything from American Apparel, so i don't know. I know that i'm a size 10. Ish. Whether that's a UK or US, I've no idea.

which later got me thinking about the standard unit of measurement in fashion. I'm currently measuring up and making patterns for spaces and, as such, very grateful for the invention of the inch (and then of the centimetre) as a standard unit of measurement, and the design of a tape measure.

I know, small things, amuse small minds.

I'm not exactly sure when these came to pass, but in a recent-ish conversation, ex-colleagues of mine and I were surmising that it was probably as the result of the textile trade. not the craft of making clothes, but the concept of trading, customising, selling and economy, using garments/cloth as the primary currency. Presumably, this required people on both sides of the trading table, to understand how long a piece of cloth was going to be. How do you measure that? Well, you have to devise a unit and a tool to measure with.

OK, so as the textile trade booms, , the concept of the prefabricated garment develops, to which you have to develop a sizing system. This seems to work well for a large amount of time. We still haven't worked out exactly what the difference is between a UK 4 and a US 8, but then again, neither have the supermodels, or the haute couture designers, so it ain't all bad.

but nowadays, clothes aren't 'from' the UK or the US. In fact, they're mostly made in china. designed elsewhere, but the industry sizing standard is not strict, rarely adhered to and a little, well, loose. it seems that countries, or whomever runs the fashion industry nowdays, don't care so much. unlike other areas of industry where a unit, is a unit, is a unit. for instance, a megabyte of RAM is 1024KB worldwide. you don't get a 1000KB in india, 958KB in italy on a good day and 1055KB in new zealand because they value a little extra room. this would undermine the concept of having a global standard. and well, big global brands like Dell and Apple couldn't control their market if the unit was a little fuzzy. but no, not for the fashion industry..

although....



[Enter globalisation. ]

what better way to 'take over the world' [insert doom and gloom organ dirge], than to create ones own unit of measurement. like American Apparel M (Medium) is now a standard unit of measurement. It doesn't fit into UK, US, EU fashion standards but transcends (or ignores) it. Other 'sizes' I've heard of recently: the GAP 10, the H&M Small and the Converse 5. This supposes that one has worn clothes from all of the above brands. which of course we all have, right?. and belies a level of arrogance and or smarts that i can't quite work out if i despise or admire.

what i find most scary about this whole messy sizing business is that if there is no level playing field within the fashion industry, why are we (mostly women) still playing against the numbers. despite years of feminist mutterings, there is still an aspiration to an 8, 12 or, even worse, small. when small becomes a unit of measurement that we pit ourselves against, things are going to get ugly. more dangerously for some than others.



and, to add to the sickness of us having to 'measure up' to an ever-shifting standard of measurement, is that there doesn't seem to be the impetus to change that. we may boo and hiss at the big designer labels, looking for them to change their sizing, we may whinge at the mega street labels, bitching at how shit we feel that we're wearing large, when we used to be a 10, but the reality is, that the unit of measurement comes from both sides of the trading table. which means that as consumers of cloth, there has to be the will to know exactly what we're buying. and perhaps, sadly. we don't really want that to change yet.