2016 / Moss Maille
Part of the Haute Filtrage collection, a wearable tech collaboration between Gregory Phillips and textile designer Wendy Ng, Haute Filtrage is Toronto's contribution to Subtle Technologies Festival 2016: Seamless Visions.
Continuing the theme of emergent growth, this piece takes its cues from both terrestrial mosses and aquatic plant-like animals called hydras, tentacled creatures found in most freshwater ponds. The piece is constructed in an ad-hoc manner from approximately 100 individual units, each a triangle with six points of potential attachment. There are three iterations of the basic unit, with projecting 'tentacles' in various stages of unfurling. The units were printed via SLS in nylon, with final assemblage done by hand. The structure of the assemblage will always be different depending on the person and what part of the body it envelops.
The RGB pattern seen on the skirt was derived from tree bark, as a way of echoing the body acting as a substrate for the moss-hydra units. The digitally printed silk georgette skirt was underlaid with metallic chiffon representing the aquatic environment the moss-hydra hybrid thrives on.
Haute Filtrage posits:
Filters are vital to our digitally mediated lives: In a landscape bombarded by signals, filters help us see the forest for the trees. Filters can block or boost information, obscure or enhance, authenticate or discredit. Can our clothing be a filter for the body? For our identity? Who is applying the filter, and who decides what is kept and what is lost? How do filters challenge our everyday perception? Using augmented reality and digital manufacturing, including 3D printing and textile design, the project aims to explore the implications of the filtered body within the public (surveillor) and private (surveilled) realms.
