This exploration aims to explore the sonic agencies of costume design and the way they both inform and add a level of expression to the movement and choreography of a performance. The work is a collaboration between Vidmina Stasiulyte and Linnea Bågander who aim to intersect their expertise in a sonic and performative conversation with a dancer. 

This research report reflects on the development of the costume design and choreography of homo(sapiens), a performance piece developed and staged between 2020 and 2022. Materials and costumes played an essential role in the performance, generating the narrative by somatically ‘speaking’ to the wearer. Two categories of somatically choreographic materials were defined through the work: ‘raw material opportunities’ based on the inherent capability of materials to inspire and create movement and form, and ‘defined material opportunities’ in which costumes were designed and formed with a choreography or movement language in mind. Comprehending these two approaches is crucial, as each design method offers, and requires, different choreographic and dramaturgical methods when integrated in a stage-based work.

Movement and temporal qualities have a significant effect on design expressions. However, in the design of dress these are often overlooked, and the static form of a positioned body is considered to be the main driver of design. This work explores the expressions of the body in motion, engaged in the interaction constituted by wearing. Through a practice-led experimental approach, the research presented in this thesis aims to establish strategies for utilising the motion of the body in the context of design development. 

The research has been carried out through multiple series of experiments. Initial series of experiments focused on exploring wearing as an entwined dialogue between body and material that is expressing and informing the motion of the body. This was followed by series of experiments focusing on more particular variables such as body movement principles, material properties, and somatic experiences. Through analysing and implementing movement as a design material the work suggests an alternative type of form-thinking and form-giving where materiality together with the body movement extends garments into a temporal expression.

The result suggests an alternative model consisting of methods, concepts, and variables for design for designing temporal expressions wherein dress is defined as a temporal form and designed as a system of possible movements and ways in which a wearer can interact with a garment. Within this model, body movement is under-stood as a material and the body is viewed as a temporal structure and a mechanism for changes in the design. Overall, temporal expressions, or temporal form suggest acts of wearing and the somatic presence of the body as foundations in body-based expressions of equal importance as worn material. In particular, the design examples suggest another use of the joints of the body – the crucial points that enable move-ment – which were the main design material for temporal expressions.

The methods and thinking proposed in this thesis may be beneficial for multiple fields of art and design that use the body’s motion as design material extending the findings from the origins of dress.

In response to digital technology, new methods, thinking and aesthetics have emerged that challenge the way we design. In particular, the extraction of movement introduced by motion-capture technology proposes a design process wherein the motion rather than the form is used as a material. In such a process, the motion is extracted from a defined set of points that creates a digital representation. In this exposition, the strategies utilized when capturing a motion is translated into the process of garment making resulting in other bodily aesthetics through dress. 

Practically, this exposition is based on two independent studies that aim to define parameters for transformations of the moving body’s expression applied to a garment making process. The transformation is approached from two different perspectives; the first study is non-material and borrows theory and references from the field of dance and motion capturing technology. It maps the body as a point-based system based on the body as a moving form and pin-points body functions that affect these points. This part serves as a foundation for the second study that adds material aspects to the work, in particular, by mapping material parameters that relate to how the material is arranged in relation to these points. 

In conclusion, strategies of extraction of movement as the attachments and the scale of fragmentation of materials are considered as the main contribution to the garment making process. As it proposes a new usage of movement, the work has implications for fashion design, costume design and other body movement-based practices.

This research report discusses and reflects on the development of the costume

design and choreography of the performance piece Cuttlefish, 2017–19. In the

performance, the costumes played an essential role as they completely transformed

the movements and forms of the dancers. To enable this, costumes were designed as

temporal forms, garments that contain a particular movement language based on

the structural possibilities of the body. The costumes are discussed here from two

perspectives: in relation to their role in constructing a narrative for the audience,

choreographer and dancers and secondly concerning the practical aspects of their

development as temporal forms. The suggestion is that garments constitute material

opportunities, designed to provide a system of possible movements and expressions

that the choreographer and dancer can explore. The result has implications

for both fields of fashion design and costume design as it proposes fundamental

parameters for a method of constructing garment as temporal form.

This article discusses a practical exploration of the ability of a textile to meet with and affect bodies. It builds on the inherent ability of textiles, particularly in the form of a garment, to evoke movements and emotions. This paper suggests a shift in focus of the design of bodily materiality, towards an expression emerging from interactions connecting materiality and performativity. The findings are the result of 2.5 years of exploration, during which four performances, ten workshops, and four exhibitions were performed. The entwined parameters of expressing and informing are applied as a material choreographic thinking, which in this case results in a material choreography of openness, where expressing and informing are essential as entwined design parameters in the design of body-material interactions. The material choreography is developed as a method for addressing somatic experience, with improvements in terms of wellbeing and presence as aesthetic goals, focusing on reducing movements and emotions relating to stress for people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome.

This work started off as an exploration of where and how materials are attached to a body forms material conversation but ended up as a far more versatile and complicated conversation with performers and fellow designers in the costume agency 2019. Questions like; When is something a worn costume and when does it make the body into an object? When some choreographing and when something is choreographed? And essentially where these costumes and did it really matter if they were or not? 

 The full documentation of the workshop is available here: https://vimeo.com/381650530

Credit list:

Performers: Nadege Kubwayo, Victor Amel Pedersen 

Costume design: Linnea Bågander

Light designer: Kaja Glenne Lund

Photo: Espen Tollefsen