Tangible v Intangible

Shadow being intangible, and residue being tangible.
What tangible objects or materials can represent this intangible object?
Do these tangible materials represent an intangible matter, such as a shadow?
What is the relationship between tangible and intangible?
Can they work together to form one?
Going back to the concept of a shadow being an inseparable companion.
Can a tangible residue be an inseparable companion?
Can you be tangibly dressed in the residue from an intangible matter?
Can you ‘feel’ dressed in the residue from an intangible matter?
If shadow is the residue of a form and light source, then what is a shadows residue?

What materials leave a residue? And what kind of tangible properties do they have?
Water: Sits on skin, some absorbs, falls down the body/ object along contours in droplets.
Fabric i.e. Cotton: Small fibres left on skin, imprints on body if too tight.
Tomato sauce: Sticks to skin, falls down the body leaving a residue.
Ink (marker): Stains skin directly, leaving a tick line, with even coverage of colour.
Ink (pen): Pulls flesh when trying to move across skin. Leaves a thin line.
Ink (liquid & brush): Thickness depends on brush. Will stain skin, but depending on the amount of liquid may drip down surface.
Paint (watercolour): drips down body, does not stain skin as well as ink.
Paint (gauche): sits on top of skin.

Shadow workshop # 2 : With Ricarda & Antong

The main idea / concept I took away from the workshop with Ricarda and Antong, was the concept of the tangible and intangible and the relationships between the two. Taking the 2D shape on the screen and turning it into a 3D shape with the addition of smoke. Even though the smoke turned the shape into the 3D object it still was not tangible. What we tried to tackle was turning this intangible 3D object into a tangible 3D object.

second responce to shadow

The rest of my images and process can be seen in my visual diary.

Can you wear a shadow? Does it leave a residue?

Here are some questions I asked myself in class and then another session of question asking outside of class. Each set tackles a different idea. The first being material studies, responding to my first exploration with pasta. The second being a further investigation of shadow.

Material studies :
Did I feel dressed wearing spaghetti? Was I wearing it or did it just adorn my body? Was the spaghetti purely adornment? Or was it covering my body for modesty? What areas of the body would need to be covered to conserve modesty? What areas of the body would feel naked without covering? Only the perceived erogenous zones? Or other areas of the body that are often on display? Is clothing/ fashion a shadow placed on top of the body to conceal our modesty? Is fashion dictated by the body? What materials create clothing? Does it have to be fabric as we know it? Or could other materials be used to imitate this commonly seen ‘fabric’? What is real fabric? Can we recreate these ‘real’ qualities with different materials? What materials would we use? Would they feel the same, look the same, smell the same? Do our senses dictate what we wear? Does comfort have to play a roll in fashion? How does all this relate to shadow? Is clothing a form of shadow upon the body? Is shadow a copy?

Shadow :

Can you wear a shadow? Is a shadow placed upon the body considered a garment? Does this shadow have to stay fixed on the body for it to be considered worn? What areas of the body does the shadow have to cover? Is there a left over residue from a shadow? No. Can there be? If the shadow has been copied on to the body for a fixed amount of time does that make it a garment? How can you copy a shadow onto the body? Does a shadow have to be a product of a light source? Can internal details be seen on a shadow? Can multiple meanings of the word shadow be worked with together? Including, a slight suggestion, a shadowy or faint image, a mere semblance and an inseparable companion. If a shadow is projected on to the body is it still and inseparable companion? Even if it is only temporary? As a shadow cannot be taken off the body, it can only be moved away from.

Key words :

Residue
Companion
Inseparable
Body
Temporary

dressed?

I have no idea where this came from or who's artwork it is, but is this man dressed?

The left over residue makes me think yes.

If anyone knows this artist can you let me know. thanks

shadow

Click on image to enlarge.

I decided to look up the dictionary meaning for shadow to further understand the term. This bought up some extra idea I hadn’t considered. Here are a few that interested me most.

5. A slight suggestion; a trace.
7. A shadowy or faint image
8. A mere semblance.
13. An inseparable companion.

Could all these ideas of shadow be worked with in conjunction with each other? Or for that matter could all the dictionary meanings for shadow be worked with together to create one final product or idea?

These are some of my own perceptions of shadow:

- A simplified form
- A silhouette
- A secondary image
- Product of a light source
- Only external details
- Artificial or natural

responce to shadow

Here's my first response to shadow. I obviously took it quite literally. Needs a lot more working on.

equations

Here are some of the fashion equations I have been considering during my research.

- Practical vs. Impractical
- Comfort vs. Discomfort
- Basic vs. Decorative
- Clothing vs. Fashion
- Wearable vs. Unwearable
- Convenient vs. Inconvenient
- Adornment vs. Modesty
- Putting on vs. Wearing

material exploration: non – contact work.

I decided to select the material of pasta to work with in my non-contact hours. This was mainly due to the many ways it can be worked with and how its properties can change with each manipulation. The four ways I decided to work with pasta are; sheets of fresh home made pasta, home made pasta cut into fettuccini, dry shop bought pasta, cooked and dry shop bought pasta, cooked with tomato sauce.

#1






My plan was to use fresh pasta sheets to create a bodice for the body. I'd hoped that the pasta would dry out and create a kind of mould around the body. This didn’t work at all as when I took it off the body it crumbled in my hands. This made putting it on quite difficult. Its property completely changed when I tried to pick it up and pull it over my head, it broke up into small sections making it not at all garment like. My belief is if there is no residue or product left on the body it cannot be considered wearing it. This was the case with this investigation.


#2






This is my investigation using dry cooked pasta without sauce. I draped the pasta over the body to create another bodice / top. The majority of the pasta fell off the side of the body as I was placing it on there. The model was my sister and she felt completely uneasy about the slimy pasta on her body. She said, “luckily I know it’s pasta, otherwise I would have thought it was worms. Putting the pasta on over my head like I would a normal top or jumper it felt slimy, stringy, gooey, slippery but at the same time extremely sticky. Once most of the pasta fell away there was a lot left over in my hair, stuck between the strands imitating hair itself. Considering there is a left over residue is it still a garment? I wouldn’t call it a garment, but it is defiantly an adornment, even though it has adorned a different part of the body that was intended. Maybe this is the transition between putting on a garment and wearing a garment.

#3






I piled the dry cooked pasta with sauce on top of the body to create another top. Unlike the pasta without sauce it didn’t fall off the body. The tomato acted as a bonding agent and helped hold the pasta to the body. ‘Putting on’ this top was a similar sensation to the cooked pasta without sauce, but not as sticky and a lot more slimy. There was a lot more residue left over from this ‘garment’. It again make me think that the residue does make it a garment. But it isn’t in the intended area. Not much of the pasta actually made it past my neck, making it much more of a hat than the intended top.

#4

I'm still in the process of creating my fourth garment. I'll upload it as soon as its done.

weekly reading : fashion-ology – kuniya kawamura.

I found this reading much easier to understand than ‘The Fashion System’ by Roland Barthes, which made it a lot more interesting and informative. I have now borrowed the book from the library and am working my way through it to gain a further understanding of fashion and clothing and what divides the two.

I’m very interested in the concept that clothing and fashion should be dealt with as separate identities; this is something that I have never thought about before. Now it’s obvious how different that are and how they should each be treated and looked at in a very different ways. From this reading I would like to further explore the transformation and process that clothing has to go through to become fashion and what defines fashion.

Here are some segments of the book, particularly in chapter one that I found particularly interesting. I’ve decided to bunch them into the two sections of clothing and fashion so it’s easy to distinguish the two.

clothing:

- ‘Generic raw materials of what a person wears’

- ‘cloth; meaning a piece of woven or felted material made of wool, hair or cotton, suitable for wrapping or wearing’

fashion:

- ‘not a material product but a symbolic product which has no content substance by/in itself’

- ‘a special manner of making clothes’ (Brenninkmeyer 1963)

- ‘invisible elements included in clothing’ not ‘visual clothing’

- ‘fashion rests on a supposed need for novelty to shift the erogenous zone so that different parts of the female body are emphasized by the changes in style’ (Laver 1969)

material workshop # 2: material investigation.

part 1 : choose 4 materials from 4 specified catagories.

paperclips.
soap.
paper.
sugar.

part 2 : remake one item of clothing you are wearing with all four of the selected materials. then ‘put on’ your garments and document.

the boot:



here are the four boots i made out of selected materials:



putting these ‘garments’ on:


soap.
Dry soap on dry skin has completely different characteristics to the conventionally used wet soap on wet skin. Its scratchy, drags on the skin and leaves a sticky white residue. If there is a residue left over are you technically wearing the ‘garment’?


paper.
The paper crushed as soon as it was worn. Making it more of a wear once ‘garment’ or more like a one step ‘garment’. I don’t believe this is wearing it at all.


sugar.
The rough, grainy and fluid in form nature of sugar makes it impossible to wear without some kind of adherent.

material workshop #1 : clothes swap & the language of fashion.

part 1 : pair up with classmate of approximately the same size as you.
part 2 : swap clothes.
part 3 : discuss the relationship we have with our clothes. did you feel different being dressed in someone else’s gear? if so, why?

Jacinta and I chose to work with each other, as we are relatively the same height. Upon realisation of the fact that we had to change clothes I was slightly worried as I am probably a size or so bigger than her. The top fit fine as it was a big baggy shirt. The jeans also fit to an extent but with very little stretch they didn’t do up. I felt uncomfortable with the fact that the jeans didn’t do up and I had to pull the shirt down to cover my undies but other than that I didn’t feel very different to wearing my own clothes, as Jacinta and I wear similar styles of clothing. I have actually worn a very similar outfit out of my own wardrobe before. So really the only thing I felt uncomfortable with was the fact an area of my body was exposed that is deemed and erogenous zone. If the clothing didn’t fit around the wrists or shoulders would I still have felt this uncomfortable? I doubt it.

Another thing I felt uncomfortable about was Jacinta wearing my clothes. I was worried she would think they smell or are dirty. That made me wonder, was she more worried about me in her clothes than being in mine? Because this is how I felt. Did everyone have different feelings towards swapping clothes? Or were everyone else’s quite similar?




Heres my description of what I was wearing:

A grey blue linen shirt hangs of the shoulders and flows loosely over the body. The varying lengths of hem fall softly around the hips. Four coral buttons down the centre front direct the eye to skin tight indigo blue denim jeans cuffed at the ankle. The feeling is both comfortable and uncomfortable, loose and restricted and cool and clammy.

^^^

I wrote this description in class before I even read the weekly reading of ‘The Fashion System’ by Roland Barthes. I think it ties in perfectly with the concept of written clothing and it pretty much describes what I am wearing down to some of the finer details such as button and the cuffed hem of the jeans.