There is another fluid dress and it is in the “Wovon Maschinen träumen” (“What Machines Dream Of”) exhibit produced by Ars Electronica. The exhibit is hosted at the Volkswagen Automobil Forum in Berlin; it will be open (and the dress will be running) every day until August 28th.
I don’t have pictures of the dress installed, so you’ll have to trust me that these boxes aren’t empty.
The Fluid Dress is now on display at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. It will be exhibited (along with a new video) in their ‘RoboLab’ from March 2011 - 2012.
Apart from bewilderment and pride, I also feel a bit empty and apologetic.
Empty – because my workspace is empty – and apologetic because the dress isn’t pumping at the museum. I am, however, working on both of these problems.
So, here is the video for the fluid dress. It has been a long labor to make this.
I do hope you find something here, although I have become mostly unenchanted with this dress and video, despite my ambitions. I don’t know if I was ever really captivated with it or just captive to it. If that was the case, the Stockholm Syndrome is far gone.
The Vimeo Festival + Awards was awesome. It’s true; you can spell ‘rad’ without ‘Vimeo.’ But I wouldn’t suggest it.
I need to thank some people:
Thank you Yann, Agata, Brian, Marco, Blake, Andrea, Steve, Dan, Evan, José Luis, Paola, Carlton, Alicia, Mike, Stacy, Ze, Mr Nokia, Nyle, and DR. REGGIE.
It’s been a while, but I am alive and excited about a couple things. Both involve New York:
My little fluid sculpture video is a Vimeo Awards finalist in the ‘Captured’ category. This is at once baffling and amazing. This is bafflazing. I had registered for the festival and bought my plane ticket even before the shortlist was announced. Now I’m really excited.
I’ll be at the NY Maker Faire this weekend playing around with tubes. You should come too!
I am still working on a video for the dress; it has been a lot of work but I hope to have it finished in a couple weeks.
The Maker Faire is over and it was spectacular. The projects on display, as always, were some careful mixture of brilliant, hilarious, and dangerous.
I had an amazing time talking to everyone and hearing your kind words. I showed only a portion of what I had hoped to, and the dress I did show was kind of sloppy, but nonetheless it was a completely gratifying weekend.
There was one question I got frequently that is worth answering, and that is: “how did you think of this”?
Forgetting for a second that we’re talking about a dress made with tubes and a pump and not, for instance, something useful (the ShamWow, par exemple.) I would like to propose that the origin of this, and most any idea, is a bit absurd and mostly irrelevant.
What is vital though, and of greater influence on any project, is how it perpetuates.
The Maker Faire is what motivated me. The receptive, forgiving, and care-full group of people represented there and on the internet is of much greater consequence to my project than whatever random elements fused at its conception.
There is another story — one I didn’t really understand until recently — that I would like to share one day too.
The Superfluid Skirt made its first appearance on a lady at the DIY Fashion Show at Arise! Bookstore.
The fit was horrible, the style was….¿Cómo se dice “whack”? But everything still worked well enough to make smiles. The redeeming moment of the night came after the show when my model remarked:“I kinda feel powerful”
It works (in a mechanical sense.) The skirt works and the powerpack too. Although it’s not fashionable or long-term-interesting yet.
Here, I put together a bombastic video to lend it that extra pathos (or is it bathos?)
Watch for my favorite bit of this video, it comes at the end just as the tube dangling from the left side of the skirt (not the galloping one on the side) changes from transparent, to white, to blood red.
