Grow Your Own Clothes – Experiments with Kombucha-Based Material
Designer Suzanne Lee shares her experiments in growing a kombucha-based material that can be used like fabric or vegetable leather to make clothing. The process is fascinating, the results are beautiful (though there’s still one minor drawback …) and the potential is simply stunning.
Fashion designer Suzanne Lee directs the BioCouture research project, which sprang from an idea in her book Fashioning the Future: Tomorrow’s Wardrobe, a seminal text on fashion and future technologies. Her research harnesses nature to propose a radical future fashion vision: Can we grow a dress from a vat of liquid?
Using bacterial-cellulose, Lee aims to address pressing ecological and sustainability issues around fashion and beyond. A Senior Research Fellow at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, she is working with scientists to investigate whether synthetic biology can engineer optimized organisms for growing future consumer products
“I’m also creating new bacterial-cellulose composite swatches looking at eco-substrates like hemp. This month I’m teaching an exciting project exploring systems and synthetic biology to postgraduate textile and industrial design students alongside eminent scientists from Cambridge University.” Suzanne Lee
Gold! 14 Actors Acting – Great Web Special by NYT
I know 36 hours are like a month on the internet, and this here is a bit older but a real keeper. Beautiful and intriguing films. From New York Times Magazine Hollywood Issue “14 Actors Acting”. Shot by Solve Sundsbo. The New York Times photography feature has won a Gold Cube for photography at the Art Directors Club global awards held in New York.
The fifteen actors are Javier Bardem (Biutiful), Lesley Manville (Another Year), Jesse Eisenberg (Solitary Man, Holly Rollers, The Social Network), James Franco (127 Hours), Chloë Moretz (Kick-Ass, Let Me In), Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone), Natalie Portman (Black Swan), Robert Duvall (Get Low), Annette Bening (Mother and Child, The Kids Are All Right), Anthony Mackie (Night Catches Us), Noomi Rapace (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest), Tilda Swinton (I Am Love), Matt Damon (Green Zone, Hereafter, True Grit), Vincent Cassel (Mesrine: Killer Instinct, Black Swan), Michael Douglas (Solitary Man, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
A.O. Scott provides the introduction…
“It goes without saying that acting is a matter of discipline and craft, and that what the best performers do is always subject to analysis, criticism and argument. They say their lines, hit their marks, suffer through retakes and rehearsals, and they trust that an artisanal collaboration with writers, technicians, directors and other actors will somehow yield a work of art. But acting is also an art by itself: alchemical, mysterious, at times almost magical. A person transforms into someone else — a dancer, a Texas Ranger, a wife exiled from her native country, a young vampire, a former militant, a mogul in old age — and in the process reveals something basic and essential that is his or hers alone. In the past, we have invited the year’s great performers to be themselves for the camera and, on video, to talk about what they do. This year, we asked them to do it: to show us — in a few gestures and with a few props but without dialogue or story — what acting is. And here they are, striking some of the classic attitudes of cinema, turning their bodies and faces into instruments of pure, deep and enigmatic emotion. You will, of course, recognize them immediately and admire their grace, daring and skill. But you also may be startled to see how thoroughly themselves they are in the midst of pretending otherwise.”
A Visual Life – Beautiful Short About “The Sartorialist”
Thanks Tyler Manson (Director) and Intel (Visual Life Series) for this shortfilm about a man visually articulating his vision of style and photography. Enjoyed it very much!
Related Articles
- The Three Muscles of Creativity – Inspiring Short by Intel (aldorf.wordpress.com)
Biodegradable Sneakers by OAT
OAT is a young innovative shoes company founded two years ago by designer Christiaan Maats with the aim to create products that connect people with their environment in an imaginative way. That’s why in every product there is a story for the buyer to share.
The guys at OAT explain: “Our goal is to make products that are part of the planet we party on. We all like the nice bits in fashion, so why not make those bits fully biodegradable?” It comes of no surprise that for such an innovation OAT had to spend two years in search of the most appropriate materials, focusing at the same time on clean design: “The challenge was to make a sneaker that’s got fresh style, with materials that break down when you bury them. There were no real alternatives on the market, so we had to develop and source our own materials and processes. Available in European stores this spring in a limited edition run of 900 pieces.
Thermoelectric Wellies – GotWind & Orange teamed up
Thermoelectric wellies that charge your mobile phone using heat from your feet
Orange today unveils the Orange Power Wellies, a groundbreaking and innovative eco mobile phone charging prototype created to keep Glastonbury Festival goers connected with their friends across the weekend.
The Orange Power Wellies, created in collaboration with renewable energy experts GotWind, use a unique ‘power generating sole’ that converts heat from your feet into an electrical current. This ‘welectricity’ can then be used to re-charge your mobile phone. Orange, Official Communications Partner for the Glastonbury Festival, will be showcasing the Orange Power Wellies prototype onsite…(read more)
Amazing “Reanimation” Couture Concept
Here is the concept of Schmidttakahashi, taking pieces from the clothing bank and tagging each item with an RFID chip. That way you know exactly who donated what item. Then stitching the pieces back together to a new fashion collection. Because you have all the data you can track back who donated which part of the new clothes. Think about it, over generations you could recirculate the materials and always “reanimate” fashion. A sustainable and very intriguing concept using current technology. An entire new business model including designers and donators. Fashion industry…you are onto something.
The Index LTD
The Index — a storefront gallery in Brooklyn — is a collection of materials and objects whose purposes, characters, and origins are fascinating to curator Jonathan Roquemaure.— each object’s uncommon looks are compelling enough on first blush, the history behind their materials and past utility often requires a little digging. His catalog comprises a carefully considered index of objects—
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