Intra-Acting Body and Textile Expressions Becoming with Digital Movement Translation

Abstract

Body-centric design disciplines that utilize digitization processes such as fashion are tasked to engage with theoretical concepts commonly applied in digital-native design disciplines in order to use digital technologies as more than simple tools. Guided by intra-action theory, alternative ontological and hierarchical relations between the body and textiles were explored by digitally translating their movement. An installation was developed to find hybrid body-textile expressions using motion-capture sensors and robotic arms. The findings suggest that technological augmentations of the body and textiles can increasingly be diffracted in terms of their apparent physical-material boundaries through movement translation. Movement data functioned as a performative mediator, expanding movement-based expressions from one agent to another. Body-textile hybrids emerged from this process, and shaped each other in a mutual act of becoming, challenging ontological structures of the body and textiles commonly applied in fashion design.