This artistic research project delves into the innovative realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology as a tool for analyzing and redesigning garments, aiming to reshape the designer’s approach to sorting and designing based on discarded materials.
When working with redesign, what you have at hand is what you start designing with. The garment as material. No matter whether it is entirely unique or many more of the same exist, the redesign process can be repeated many times if more of the same material is to be found. However, the basic principle is - the material, i.e., the garment, comes first.
Every garment has its own problems and characteristics and shifting classifications – wear and tear, pilling, seams, pockets, colours, stains, prints, linings, zippers etc. Sometimes these hinder the redesign process; sometimes the process originates from these very specific things. When working with discarded garments the actual hands-on sorting from an expressive and aesthetical perspective is a crucial, yet a very complex time-consuming procedure. AI technologies might offer a transformative solution to the challenges associated with manual sorting, since computer vision algorithms can identify fabric types, colors, and conditions and therefore streamlining the sorting process in the recycling facilities. This also points towards novel classifications of these unpredictable, volatile material streams. A development of alternative terminology for expressive properties with aesthetical consequences for design.
In this specific research project 38 shirts have been photographed analyzed and shuffled in 1425 possible combinations. All based on the redesign principal “2 becomes 1” They are displayed randomly, eight at the time, in minor collections to demonstrate the capacities of imaginabledesign alternatives. Further in this ongoing research is the evaluation of “best blends” from a design perspective, and by doing so teach the machine which combinations preferred sor rejected from a designer’s perspective. This needs further research, however - AI's integration into garment sorting and redesign processes holds immense potential for optimizing various stages of a garment lifecycle and simultaneously challenges practitioners towards future spaces of fashion design.
What is particularly interesting is that redesign methodologies tend to be a very analog and craft-based, but with the integration of AI for sorting and redesigning with discarded textiles, this analog and time-consuming process has potential to be challenged and developed not only in favor for local waste streams but also a design tool within fashion practice. An unexplored esthetical evaluation for novel categories and material identities and based on discarded garments.
2024.