Digital Skin, How Developments in Digital Imaging Techniques and Culture are Informing the Design of Futuristic Surface and Fabrication Concepts

In the last decade, technical advances in computer graphic (CG) texture mapping and surfacing processes have influenced broader cultural spheres and commercial practices. As emerging idioms from computer graphic imaging (CGI) sectors have become synonymous with related everyday terminology, the terms “skin,” “surface,” and “texture”—common parlance in real-world scenarios and prevalent in textile spheres—have come to intersect physical and digital meaning. Recent aspects of CGI development and use provide a particular framework for this article, which goes on to observe newly emerging textile and surface designers engaged in the creative development of digital skin and associated concepts. Imbued with science fiction, future scenarios, and advances in computer imaging software and hardware capability, these practitioners are hybridizing digital and material languages and challenging conventional approaches to design and fabrication processes.

Digital media tools are instrumental in facilitating these practices. As design practitioners challenge perceived notions of textile, substrate, and skin through relatively newfound digital contexts, resulting propositions include high-tech interfaces for communication, surface embellishment, and guise. Also outlined is how such digital propositions are beginning to overlap emerging real and conceptual applications in wider industry and science realms, expanding the nature of and prospect for surface design. Resulting paradigms pertain to the virtual reinvention of skin as a conceptual material interface.