Re:Familiar, the drone dress, explores the potential for relationships with non-human entities. Like a witch’s familiar, drones are servant, spy and companion all at once. The drone follows the model, and surrounds her with billowing silk chiffon.
Re:Familiar explores our relationship to the technological sublime. We have reimagined the body in relationship to the server room, a key site of information exchange. Cables, fans, and ethereal UV leds cover the body, in an embodiment of the infrastructure of technology. The dress is fabricated with a body suit built from Ethernet cables covered in photoluminescent pigments that wrap around the body, encasing the model. Her peplum armature contains blower fans arranged to lift and blow streams of silk at her hips.
This project features an AR Parrot drone carrying the train of a dress down the runway. The drone is controlled by custom software, and follows the model wherever she goes. Silk chiffon connects the woman to the drone – billowing and blowing as the propellers spin. Re:Familiar explores our desire to control technologies, casting the drone as a servant.
This project features an AR Parrot drone carrying the train of a dress down the runway. The drone is controlled by custom software, and follows the model wherever she goes. Silk chiffon connects the woman to the drone – billowing and blowing as the propellers spin. Re:Familiar explores our desire to control technologies, casting the drone as a servant.
Part spectacle, part speculation, the Drone Dress has dazzled crowds on the runway at Make Fashion, and exhibited with an AR version of the runway performance alongside digital storytelling agency No Campfire Required.
Exhibits + press
- Make Fashion 2017
- Ontario Centre for Excellence
- We Are Wearables
- Electric Runway InStore
- E-Textiles and Wearable Electronics Alliance
Credits:
- Hillary Predko: Design + Textiles + Fabrication
- Lee Wilkins
- Lindy Wilkins: Design + Code / electronics + Drone Pilot
- Alanna Predko: Tech assistant, Drone pilot, Stage hand
- Carmon Ng: Model (Make Fashion)
- Jane Hacker: Model (photoshoot)
- Support from the Social Body Lab, Creative Technologist of Toronto
- Special thanks: Jon Grieman, Christopher Lewis, Josh McLain, Kate Hartman