Potential Beauty

I am a textile designer who has moved from working with fabric to making digital visualisations of fashion and textiles, in both future and historical scenarios. I use animation technology developed for the film and computer games industries (e.g.‘Toy Story’, ‘Final Fantasy, ‘Tomb Raider’) but I adapt and extend it in a visual art/textile context through both technological and aesthetic means. I specialise in cloth (cloth, skin, hair are the most difficult elements to digitally simulate as 3D).

This 3:20 minute animation project was supported by an AHRC Small Grant (2001-2002) and VICONPeak. I used computer graphic (CG) construction to create a new paradigm for the design and presentation of textiles and dress in both the museum and fashion sectors. The work required: the digital construction of a complicated garment form (‘wrap-around’ design) connecting textile, dress and body movement; working with two digital ‘cloth’ layers and body form; making ‘believable’ CG ‘cloth’; linking unedited digitised body movement to the garment model by using motion capture technology; developing intricate textile/surface design, achieving ‘sensuous’ qualities absent in commercial production.

First exhibited in a group show in Australia, a triptych version was subsequently commissioned by the Nottingham Bonington Gallery for solo exhibition at the Broadway Media Centre. The original version went on to the V&A, 2005 in another group show.