The article is actually an interview with artist Bart Hess about his project A Hunt for Hightech. His images show mutant skins, breathing shoes, and living furs. Bart Hess worked to find new materials forecasting trends in fashion and culture. Hess explained that he did not try to mimic real animal kingdoms but "create a fantasy world of [his] own." He imagined fantasy animals, ones that could be genetically manipulated. His ideas led to part robotic, part organic animal-like creations. Hess uses materials that are not commonly seen in the fashion world such as blended plastics, metallic's, silicon's and technical foils. Prosthetic technology and genetic manipulation inspired Hess to create this fantasy animal kingdom, future human shapes, and new body forms. He says that his work "is blindly discovering a low-tech prosthetic way for human enhancement.
At first, Hess's art is sort of creepy. But after viewing more of his work on his blog, I was able to at least understand part of his process for coming up with wacky but interesting creations. It seems that you are able to group the suit-like pieces into categories. I like the fact that each piece is not completely random but instead many are simple variations of one idea. (The best way to describe this is grouping the art into adjective categories; bubbly, rolly, foamy, and jagged) His work isn't too crazy for me after seeing the similarities. Also, his colors and texture are sort of fun, and mostly all the pieces are visually pleasing (as opposed to a lot of completely random ugly contemporary art).
Bart Hess hopes to impact trends in fashion, product, or architecture with his work. He has some far out ideas about where technology could take his creations. He says "Why kill an animal and re-form the fur into a shape? Why not have the animal already shaped to your body, have it living and breathing around you, like the shoes." Obviously today's technology and ethical environments do not allow these extreme fantasies to become reality. And it is probably unlikely that live animals for clothes will catch on in the fashion world.
No comments:
Post a Comment