Teamlab transforming fashion and space

“Digital [art] has allowed us to liberate art from the physical and transcend boundaries.”

– teamLab

TeamLab is an interdisciplinary art collective of over 500 members who use space as their primary creative canvas. Retail spaces, galleries, dining venues and more are transformed into imaginative, seamless hybridizations of the digital and physical.

“When we started teamLab in 2001 at the rise of the digital age, we had the passion to eliminate boundaries and work beyond existing disciplines, which was becoming possible by digital technologies.”

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This collaborative exploration is the inspiration behind the namesake of the collective which is further driven by an interesting perspective on how technology has historically empowered us and how it can creatively evolve.

“It seems that the main focus for Silicon Valley originated technology is the extension of someone’s mind. Personal computers and smartphones are certainly extensions of the mind. Twitter is an extension of a person’s statements and Facebook is an extension of our personal relationships. These digital domains see the ‘self’ as the principle, and are meant to be used personally.”

Many of teamLab’s experiences are interactive and immersive, allowing participants to “think and feel with their whole bodies”. Through physical engagement or, for instance, via mobile device such as within Digital Light Canvas (a commissioned work created for The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands), the resulting experience is one that “ambiguates the boundaries between people and the artwork”.

With the current state of retail undergoing a “seismic” shift as reported in BoF’s The State of Fashion 2018 and the emergence of spacial, experiential technologies, it is exciting to see how visionary artists such as teamLab are pioneering and influencing how space can be explored and utilized as a creative medium.

“If ‘light’ is our paint, we want to use everything as a canvas to make art. And if clients, including brands, resonate with our philosophy and provide us with a ‘canvas,’ we certainly would be happy to work with them.”

For open exhibitions, please see the following list:

TEAMLAB: A FOREST WHERE GODS LIVE

The 500,000-square meter Mifuneyama Rakuen Park was created 172 years ago in 1845, during the end of the Edo period. Sitting on the borderline of the park is a 3,000-year-old sacred Okusu tree of Takeo Shrine, which is Japan’s 7th largest. Also in the heart of the garden is another 300-year-old sacred tree. Our forebears turned a portion of this magnificent forest, with Mifuneyama Mountain at the center, into a garden while utilizing the trees of the natural forest. The border between the garden and wild forest is so ambiguous that when wandering through the garden people will enter into the woods and animal trails. Enshrined in the forest is the Inari Daimyojin deity surrounded by a huge natural rock. The cave houses the Five Hundred Arhats and the Three Buddha Figures that are carved into the rock face, believed to have been carved by the great priest Gyoki 1,300 years ago.

The forest, rocks, and caves of Mifuneyama Rakuen have formed over millions of years, and for thousands of years people have sought meanings in them. The park that we know today sits on top of this history. It is the ongoing relationship between nature and humans that has made the border between the forest and garden ambiguous, keeping this cultural heritage beautiful and pleasing. Lost in nature, where the boundaries between man-made garden and forest is unclear, we feel like we exist in a continuous, borderless relationship between nature and humans. It is for this reason that teamLab decided to create an exhibition in this vast, labyrinthine space, so that people will become lost and immersed in the exhibition and nature.

teamLab is executing an art project called “Digitized Nature” where “Nature Becomes Art.” The concept of the project is that non-material digital art can turn nature into art without harming it.

We exist as a part of an eternal continuity of life and death, a process which has been continuing for an overwhelmingly long time. It is hard for us, however, to sense this in our everyday lives. When exploring the forest, we come to realize that the shapes of the giant rocks, caves, and the forest that have been formed over the eons, are the shapes of the continuous cycle of life itself. By applying digital art to this unique environment, the exhibition celebrates the continuity of life.

Date: Jul 19 – Oct 28, 2018
Mifuneyama Rakuen, Takeo Hot Spring, Kyushu, Japan

TEAMLAB : AU-DELÀ DES LIMITES

People move freely, form connections and relationships with others, and recognize the world through their own bodies. The body has a concept of time. In the mind the boundaries between different thoughts are ambiguous, causing them to influence and sometimes intermingle with each other.

Artworks too can move freely, form connections and relationships with people, and have the same concept of time as the human body. While the artworks remain autonomous, they transcend the boundaries between the works, influence and sometimes intermingle with each other. This is one borderless world created by a group of such works.

People lose themselves in the artwork world. The borderless works transform according to the presence of people. As we immerse and meld ourselves into this unified world, we explore a new relationship that transcends the boundaries between people, and between people and the world.

Date: May 15 – Sep 09, 2018
La Grande Halle De La Villette, Paris, France

MORI BUILDING DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: TEAMLAB BORDERLESS

teamLab Borderless is a group of artworks that form one borderless world. Artworks move out of the rooms freely, form connections and relationships with people, communicate with other works, influence and sometimes intermingle with each other.

Create new experiences with others, immerse yourself in borderless art, and explore the world with your body.

In a vast complex, three-dimensional 10,000 square meter space, 520 computers and 470 projectors create a completely new world, the likes of which have never been seen before.

Jun 21, 2018 – Permanent
MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM, Tokyo, Japan

Piece written by Carver Wilcox in collaboration with
The Fashion Robot

Further links

Teamlab
Leanne Luce

Also read:

Zeitguised – a quasi world in 3D

 

Can an AI do Balenciaga better than Balenciaga?

Will designers be replaced by algorithms in the future of fashion?

The thought of a fully automized society where robots and AI take over simple chores is not a futuristic utopia. It is, in fact, becoming more of a reality. But can machines also do more complex work that requires both imagination and artistic thinking?

Robbie Barrat, artist, and AI researcher, plays with the idea in his project, where he trains a neural network with image data from five different fashion shows from the luxury fashion house Balenciaga. The result is videos generating new models with outfits based on the training data. The garments, shapes, and textures might not be directly translatable into new pieces. Yet it shows on Artificial Intelligence’s ability to create combinations, shapes, and textures a human eye might never have come up with.

To date, Robbie does not seem to have gotten himself recruited by the ancient fashion house. However, he clearly offers radical perspectives on how artists and designers might be able to make use of AI as a tool in their daily work to innovate their creative work process.

The project in itself evokes curiosity around how similar approaches could shake the fashion industry to its core.  Would we accept paying large numbers for designer products completely generated from datasets? Or will the touch of a human become a stamp of quality in the near future?

Follow Robbie’s work process on Twitter 

Also, read Machine Learning – the future of Design? 

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Atacac – using game technology to turn fashion upside down

“We want to show a completely new way to produce and sell fashion. Another world is possible” says Atacac founder Richard Lindqvist. With a renowned career as a fashion designer running his own studio as well as consulting mega brands such as Vivienne Westwood topped with a PhD he was ready for a new adventure. Together with Jimmy Herdberg, digital creative and founder of studio Kokokaka, he decided to try a new radical approach with starting a fashion studio that had very little in common with fashion production as we know it.

The studio – Atacac founded in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2016, does not only apply innovative ideas on garment construction but also new models on how to sell and price products. Using 3D software traditionally used by the game industry, Atacac generates realistic 3D models of the garments and selling them online to customers instead of already existing products, cutting stock-holding and over production out from the production chain. The Atacac on-demand model is using pricing in the same way as flight tickets – the earlier products are purchased the better the price. Keeping the entire production chain in one spot can enable an end to end process of only a few days – something the bigger fashion brands can only dream of. Atacac is a fresh example of a small innovative player challenging a slow and unsustainable fashion industry, enabled by game technologies. But how does it work and what is its goal? Rickard and Jimmy elaborates on potential futures from their studio at Ringön.

 

Is Atacac a brand using new technologies in selling its products or a technology platform using a brand?

-We see Atacac as a creative fashion studio. This studio is elaborating with new technologies with the aim to reinvent the fashion industry. As a part of this, we do among other things run the Atacac brand and the Atacac micro-factory.

-We are currently elaborating with custom-made services together with some chosen customers. In this project, the customer downloads the 3D model together with the 2D pattern from our shareware section. She then re-designs the garment and sends the digital garment back to the Atacac micro-factory (aka 3d printer for garments) for production. We see a huge potential in making digital products available for consumers, which might eventually lead to major changes in how we relate to products, brands and production. Soon altering 3D models will be a public domain.

 

 When launching Atacac as a service, what parts didn’t work as expected? What has been your main challenges building your business?

-Delays in producing abroad made us start our own in-house micro factory for being able to elaborate with super-quick turnover times. This was not a part of the original intention but turned out to be an important part of the creative work.

You are surfing global top trends using local manufacturing with short production cycles, on-demand production and unconventional pricing models towards a more sustainable fashion industry. Will it be possible for the bigger players in the industry to adopt this way of selling products?

-Our proposals for ways of working is primarily developed from a creative perspective. We believe that the consequences of a good creative work is profitable from many perspectives. Expressional, economical and sustainable ones for example.

-Yes, it will be possible for larger companies to adopt this way of working. Most companies will have to change the ways they work in order to still be around. Some will be successful in doing so while others will disappear and be replaced by new ones.


 

What is the end goal for Atacac? Will you scale up the core brand or rather keep it small selling the platform to other brands as a service? Will Atacac ever be a multi brand platform?

-Our goal is to develop creatively and to inspire. We change from day to day. We have no end goal, there is only the end of the day. Atacac as a brand will be scaled up, to which scale is an open question.

-In a way Atacac already is a multi brand platform. As a part of elaborating with the future of retail we recently we started a monthly Fashion-Art-Technology market, that we call F.A.T market, in our studio every last Saturday of the month. We invited other brands, artists and companies to sell their things next to our products. Some of the other fashion brands produce their garments in the Atacac micro factory. This could very well also develop into a virtual multi brand community as we deliver both a digital and a physical product from the factory.

 

 

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Zeitguised – a quasi world in 3D

Since its founding in early 2000 they have kept pushing boundaries in crafting 3D, building their very own visual universe. Berlin-based studio Zeitguised clearly blurs the line between art and commercial work. However continued exploration of their personal voice catapulted them into becoming true pioneers – a path that later attracted even more and renowned clients rather than the opposite. Today Zeitguised has formed a commercial arm ‘Foam studio’ allowing the other part of the studio to focus on experimental work.

Zeitguised’s work is difficult to describe yet visually irresistible. In one of their latest projects, Geist.xyz “handcrafted algorithmic textiles” are portrayed in dance-like movement. Its artistic expression feels realistic yet abstract at the same time –  referred to by the studio themselves as “synthetic art”. Experimenting with algorithms and light simulations they remind us of the famous quote by Arthur C. Clarke  – that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Henrik Mauler, one of the founders of Zeitguised took time to elaborate with me on their studio and on virtual textiles and its potential futures.

Henrik – if aliens landed on earth, how would you explain to them what Zeitguised does?

ZEITGUISED is a conceptual design studio that explores the aesthetic potential of digital design and its poetic application in the materiality of the physical world. Okay, that doesn’t sound apprehensible for aliens.
Humans are a life form mostly on the surface of this planet that doesn’t know better than expanding the reach of their minds by refining their techniques and habits via repetition and variation. We’re some of them, making representations of a quasi-world, an extension of the human mind and its imaginations, a world that might not physically exist yet very much does via sensual experiences.

There is a clear voice in what you are creating. How does a studio of many people like Zeitguised keep a consistent aesthetic?

We are a diverse group of artists, commanding different aesthetics. Yet I think we share some sensibilities, so if we discover something new via exploration, we’ll try to tie it into our expanding own cosmos. We realized our common denominators are probably, on the one hand, an empathic approach that allows inanimate objects become beings that behave and speak through shape, colors and materials. on the other hand there is the love for tension, to unite elements that seemingly don’t belong together yet make for good aesthetic dance partners.

What is the most important key in making virtual textiles to look and feel realistic?

The relation of texture detail and simulation detail. There is no algorithm that makes this easier to achieve through automation yet, it’s still a manual art and craft.

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What do artificially generated textiles have that real ones don’t?

The possibility to expand their character, which is one between a dynamic, living sculpture and a lifeless, passive drape. Suddenly there is the possibility to become a being, a life form, through this means.

Technology is advancing and in the future computers are likely to generate imagery that is today created by humans. Do you think an AI ever could create good art?

Actually, we entertain the daring thought that a sophisticated AI, much unlike the vulgar AIs that we talk of nowadays, might be capable of making art that is more powerful, mind-expanding and envelope-bursting than anything humans could ever conceive. We’re talking about an AI that is not modeled to resemble the human mind. Until then, the race is on for us humans to show that we can come up with the more unexpected concepts and aesthetics.

What client do you dream of a phone call from?

We had a couple of dream clients calling us which made us realize afterwards: we’re our own dream client…we just haven’t called ourselves yet. 🙂
On the other hand, our dream clients trust us and our creative potential and vast experience and want to see objects and products that are unique, unseen, unusual, exciting, emphatic and full of character.

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Foam Studio

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Machine learning – the future of design?

Online retailer Zalando has teamed up with Google, using machine learning to create a new virtual fashion experience letting shoppers create their own designs in 3D. The initiative called Project Muze uses a neural network trained with design preferences such as colours, textures and imagery. By answering a few questions such as mood and style the shopper will generate a design based on the answers. This together with data from the Google Fashion Trends Report and top trending objects from Zalando’s online platform.

The project taps in to the trend of using machine learning to create a personalized experience using Google’s open-source platform TensorFlow combined with a set of aesthetic parameters. It launched at trend show Bread&butter in Berlin earlier this fall where a few handpicked designs were highlighted. The chosen pieces were later to be translated into real garments. Considering the visual experience the project clearly shows a big gap between digital and physical dimensions yet to be filled. However the concept of combining algorithms with 3D product interaction suggests a potential future where shoppers can virtually create their own products based on personal data.

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Read more about 3D avatars and CGI in fashion

Twisted lamb merges fashion and gaming

Why does one of the leading game companies in the world decide to let a fashion stylist design their game characters?

Being two very different industries, fashion and games rarely intersect as they operate on separate markets. With household tech taking giant strides forward in terms of complexity as well as availability, the demand for games or gamified products increased. This likely resulted in a dual effect. The game industry, usually perceived as conservative began to open its doors to new influences.

One of the first to enter those very doors was Mary Lee, fashion stylist and creative director of renowned fashion blog Twisted Lamb. Her distinct and peculiar style has attracted clients such as Kanye West and Nicola Formichetti and could be described as a flirt with alternative culture as well as goth and tribal aesthetics. A visual expression she was later given the chance to transfer to game characters working with titles as Eve Online and World of Darkness together with Icelandic CCP games.

You were handpicked from one of the leading multiplayer companies in the world, how come they chose to work with a fashion stylist?

-CCP Games wanted to create virtual assets to sell in the game and for the players to have options for their characters. it was a bold step and very ahead of its time. They brought in myself to create current and futuristic virtual collections and to merge fashion and gaming together.

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What was your role working with their games, how much influence did you have on the production as a whole?

-I worked with a team of illustrators in Iceland and Atlanta to create the digital collections. We would create separate collections based on the type of vampire clan. For example the Brujah are very punk so we tailored outfits to them while the Tremere are rich and high end so we created clothes that would fit their lifestyle. 

How did the project actually come together, where there any culture clashes?

-The project turned out beautifully but the concept for the gaming world a bit ahead of itself. We found that many players were resistant to adopt the virtual clothing aspect.

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Tremere.SacrificialLambSome years ago Nicola Formichetti, close collaborator with Lady Gaga and former Creative Director of fashion house Mugler launched a project with the very same company, CCP games. With this he sought to bridge the gap between fashion and the digital world. A digital replica of fashion model Rick Genest also known as “Zombie boy” was recreated as a life-size avatar on a virtual catwalk, specially designed for a pop up store on New York Fashion week. A fashion experiment between digital and physical worlds in which Mary Lee aka Twisted Lamb worked as the producer, a project that created quite a buzz in the fashion industry.

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How was the collaboration perceived from the game industry, any aftermath?

The gaming industry loved this project! The aftermath was all positive and it was the beginning of all fashion/gaming collaborations. 

Back then Nicola Formichetti claimed that virtual fashion will become a core part of the fashion industry. Do you see that happening?

-Absolutely. This is just the beginning.

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Note: CCP title World of Darkness was unfortunately never released. However, with Paradox Interactive recently acquiring the rights to the World of Darkness property and its assets, a wave of expectation has swept across the hordes of excited fans for a continuation of the popular franchise.

Twisted Lamb 

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What fashion can learn from character customization

Customizable characters or the ability to create your very own avatar is a well known element in video games. Major game studios are even creating customization interfaces that are reminiscent of a real world fitting room including the ability to pick characteristics such as eye colour, skin tone and hair style.

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The importance of identification has positioned character customization as a component for game studios with graphic ambitions. It has also raised the issue of lack of diversity in an industry with reputation to only be representing white men as has historically been the only character option to choose from. Insomniac games is one of the studios rebelling against that norm in their action game Sunset Overdrive. In it, the players are given the option of playable female character as well as customization options that are unrelated to gender. It points out the importance of identification in recreating yourself digitally: you not only have the possibility to represent your physical world self, but who you want to be or, even let your imagination take you to a new digital self.

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In Bungie’s Destiny as well as BioWare’s fantasy title Dragon age: Inquisition, the player can choose his or her appearance with high level of detail in everything from race, gender and class to face features. As computer graphics have advanced into close in on photorealism, the gaps in implementation have decreased. The type of self-visualizing which has so far only been used for character design is now of interest when we digitize our lives for different kinds of services.

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Fashion ecommerce is constantly looking for new visualization tools to provide stunning digital experiences with technology used by game artists. 3D content such as creating personal avatars, virtually trying on 3D rendered garments or customizing products are services now popping up globally to bring us new ways of living our digital lives. The skillset of a CG artist is suddenly pure gold in a new fashion landscape. As shown by the advances of self-visualisation in gaming we will most likely see great innovations in the near future at this very intersection, taking the shown examples out of their original context. When it comes to visual experiences fashion has everything to learn from game art and digital storytelling.

Bungie

BioWare

Insomniac Games

 

Also read about the work of Joseph Cross and Chris Wells

The researcher who puts 3D avatars on the fashion runway

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Kate Moss will have to look for a new job – the instant media response after a Manchester Metropolitan University  press release suggesting a new virtual direction in fashion. Runway models are replaced by digital replicas – “near-faultless copies”  that need no sleep or expensive plane tickets. Academic research has never felt more like science fiction.

Dr Andrew Brownridge with Dr Peter Twigg use a combination of 3D scanning and motion capture in developing the hybrid avatars that creates a human digital copy to be digitally dressed in virtual haute couture. From there you can either render a fashion show to video file with animated characters ready to distribute or have a live performance with models in motion capture outfits, working in real time.

However the research project did not start out with a fashion focus but as an analysis tool for the movement of ballet dancers.

How come ballet was the focus of your research Andrew? 

– The research began when we were approached by the Northern Ballet School enquiring about using motion capture equipment. Their interest was for use within augmented performance which had been touched upon by the Melbourne Dance Company previously. We suggested developing the technology further in order to provide a database of gestures for choreography purposes. Upon speaking to the dancers and researching the discipline it occurred that the motion capture technology we were using had the capability of recording very accurate measurement of movement which could be used for analytical purposes for corrective coaching and training.

Would that focus have been possible outside an academic context?

– No, I don’t believe so. It takes researchers who do not have the pressure of training and performance constantly present to look at methods and processes in a different way to see further possibilities of applying the technology. We also had equipment and appropriate expertise readily available to bring technology and physical performance together.

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How did the research move over to fashion?

– Following discussions with researchers in the fashion department, it was pointed out that modelling is simply a different form of performance and the same technologies associated with movement analysis and physical representation in a virtual world could be applied similarly in the fashion industry. The fashion department had an excellent high specification body scanner which we were quick to employ and develop techniques for generation of life-like avatars.

When research has a strong technological focus, what really drives the innovation in implementation? Do those ideas come from inside the team or from the outside?

– Personally, coming from a creative background, I found it fascinating that the technologies we were using had such a wide range of application in various other fields. I had recently studied feedback methods and motor skill learning and saw the potential for utilising the motion capture technology to analyse a performance and provide detailed and accurate feedback to aid coaching methods.

What really is your personal drive as a researcher. Do you feel stronger about “cracking the code” or does how it is being used equally interest you?

– I think if you are involved with technological research, you cannot help but constantly try to be innovative and creative. I personally feel stronger about the application and how the technology can be used, and the ‘cracking the code’ is more of a means to take the technology and implement the idea.

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The fashion avatar reminds you that physical reality and virtual worlds are merging at a fast pace. On a philosophical level, what impact do you think that has on how we look at ourselves? Will we stop looking at things as “real” or “digital”?

– My personal view is “Yes!”. Initially as the visual appearance of virtual characters becomes increasingly life-like, both from an image and a movement point of view, correspondingly the levels of artificial intelligence that can be used to drive and control such avatar will rapidly develop to the point where it would not be possible to distinguish between real and digital. For example, Windows ‘Cortana’ virtual assistant is very much in its infancy, but imagine a character like this being super imposed on an avatar in a decades time. The possibilities are endless.

 

Manchester Metropolitan University

Also read about virtual prototyping

CGI meets haute couture in Thomas Traum’s virtual experiment

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Team of creatives at Thomas Traum, a Swiss agency for digital innovation teamed up with British fashion designer Cristopher Raeburn to land this magic fashion concept for his S/S collection. Titled “Meridian” the movie clearly crosses that mind tickling border between fashion, storytelling and video game graphics.

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Meridian sets place at a military wasteland, inspired by a desert boneland in Arizona where old airplanes are stored waiting for reappropriation. In a digital rendered replica a model is by flying airplane particles dressed in one of Christopher Raeburn’s signature looks. “We wanted to explore the possibilities of 3D-modeling clothes in a high fashion context and make a virtual version of a complete 3D fashion look,” says Thomas Eberwein, founder of Thomas Traum.

The film does not strive for photorealism but instead brings fashion concepts and storytelling together in a product line. By using 3D scanning and 3D software Marvellous Designer, earlier featured on Magic Fabric, the film results in an expression we have so far only seen in video games and opens up a new interesting digital landscape in fashion.

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Augmented reality disrupting the fashion show

Digital fiction is still where the most mind-breaking and visually seductive stories take place. But as technology advances the opportunity of creating interesting visual experiences expands to a wider group of creatives.

Speaking to the humans senses in digital and physical form simultaneously creates great and memorable experiences. In this virtual fashion app a digital fashion show appears just at the palm of your hand. By printing out an online available catwalk card and downloading the augmented reality app, the user points at the card and a 3D-catwalk pops up.

The show gives you front row to London College of Fashion graduation show and was developed by students Chirag Grover and Tanisha Arora in collaboration with augmented reality specialists Holition and media partner Shopping Spy.

There’s no doubt that augmented reality has the potential of disrupting the concept of fashion shows and its alternate futures.

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Download the app at myshoppingspy.com/frow

 

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Also read about Virtual Prototying